


carry you home

by pineneedlepants



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abused Derek Hale, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Danny, BAMF Stiles, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Hashing out consent issues, Hurt Derek Hale, Hurt Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, Lawyer Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Morally Ambiguous Stiles Stilinski, Negotiator Stiles Stilinski, Protective Stiles, Stiles Stilinski Takes Care Of Derek Hale, Supportive Sheriff Stilinski, Tortured Derek Hale, discussions of past rape, mentions of emotional manipulation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-02-23 18:35:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineneedlepants/pseuds/pineneedlepants
Summary: Making sure his exits are still open, Stiles pushes through the crowd. He sees men in full black gear entering, plainly sweeping over the people, sharp eyes searching. He can see a concealed weapon from a mile away, and these men are packing a bunch of them.Hunters.Stiles takes his Mets cap off his head as he makes his way through the thick flock of people, and slaps the cap on top of the black tuft of hair, making the magazine drop instantly, familiar blue eyes flashing for a millisecond.‘’Derek,’’Stiles grits out, becauseof courseit’s Derek. Who else has the shittiest luck in the whole wide world, to be clad half naked in a harsh, bitter winter, chased by men with guns? He strips his own jacket off before the wolf can answer, and Jesus, does his torn body look fuckingawful.He needs to get Derek out of there and fast.--





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This AU has been gathering dust in my drafts for over two years, so I decided to finally finish it.  
> Hope you guys enjoy it!
> 
> Not beta read.

Stiles yawns widely, hand covering his mouth as he steps down to the platform of the underground subway. Despite it being late morning, the station is packed. Stiles navigates through the mass of bodies, wanting closer to the yellow line. He grips his energy drink tiredly, taking sips every now and then just to force his brain to keep being active.

His morning lecture starts at ten fifteen. After couple years of working for the FBI, being their call-on negotiator, his superiors had urged him to get a law degree. It hadn’t taken Stiles a lot of convincing to get his ass back to a school bench, since, despite the very generous pay he gets for every call, he had gotten fairly bored with the down-time inactivity.

School is good for him. He’s networking fast, and as his first internship approaches rapidly, the more irons he’s firing, the better he stays active. He needs it, multiple projects at hand at once, finding it easier to compartmentalize every piece of information when he can focus on more than two subjects at a time.

He scans his immediate surrounding lazily, checking for any and all forms of danger. A habit that was forced upon him, but has saved his ass and several coworkers and friends from grievous injury or death more times than he can count. His eyes linger on the few frat boys who spit and curse and are making a general ruckus. They’re familiar in that ‘I’ve seen you a thousand times but I don’t _know_ you’ -way, and they’re just as much of an eyesore as before.

There are wooden benches littering aligned the graffiti painted wall, the few drunkards occupying part of them that are always there during morning rush, but find their way to safer grounds once the night falls. Mostly the benches are filled with people sleeping, stretching their limbs vertical against the surface. So when he sees someone actually _sitting_ on the benches, hiding behind a month old magazine, the man’s arms bare and full of bruises, his feet naked against the freezing platform, alarm bells immediately flare in his mind. He drops his energy drink onto a nearby trash, the can clanging noisily, making another passerby glare at him.

He can see the man shaking, the leafs of the magazine trembling along with the tremors. The man seems to have at least a tank top on, and knee length shorts, an odd combination in the freezing winter of New York. A tuft of black hair peeks out from behind the front page, the same kind of dark pili littering the man’s skinny, black and blue arms.

Stiles takes a step back from the yellow line, trying to see the man better. People are giving him wide-eyed looks, whispering incredulously at the shortage of clothes, looking away with troubled faces.

Making sure his exits are still open, Stiles pushes through the crowd. He sees men in full black gear entering, plainly sweeping over the people, searching. He can see a concealed weapon from a mile away, and these men are packing a bunch of them.

_Hunters._

Stiles takes his Mets cap off his head as he makes his way through the thick mass, and slaps the cap on top of the black tuft of hair, making the magazine drop instantly, familiar blue eyes flashing for a millisecond.

 _‘’Derek_ ,’’ Stiles grits out, because _of course_ it’s Derek. Who else has the shittiest luck in the whole wide world, to be clad half naked in a harsh, bitter winter, chased by men with guns? He rips his own jacket off before the wolf can answer, and _Jesus_ , does his torn body look fucking _awful_.

Worry makes his voice sound sharper than he intends it to. ‘’I thought you were in fucking South America, frolicking away with Cora and her new pack, finding yourself and all that shit. What the fuck are you doing here?’’

He dumps his backpack on the ground, forcing the thick jacket over Derek’s shoulders, guiding his arms and hands into the sleeves, not without difficulty. He doesn’t actually wait for the wolf to answer, not because he doesn’t think Derek wouldn’t tell him, but because of the thick shock collar the man has hanging from his neck. There are _inward_ spikes in it. Jesus.

‘’Can you walk?’’ He asks, because if Derek can’t, Stiles will grab him into a piggy back ride if nothing else. He won’t allow the hunters to get their nasty hands on Derek, ever again.

‘’Yes,’’ Derek says, softer than Stiles expects him to.

‘’Then follow me,’’ Stiles demands, and wrenches the man upwards. Derek wobbles, but stays stable.

He does a quick scan around, locating the four hunters still blindly searching the crowd, before tucking the sleeves of his jacket tighter together in an attempt to cover the wolf’s chest, then grabbing his backpack and leading Derek into the thick morning mob.

He knows he won’t get anywhere by trying to get out from the exits of this station. They’re going to have to take the subway for at least a couple stops before they can make their way up to the surface. The signal beeps, with the record telling the car is arriving, and the crowd flocks tighter together, drowning both men into it, taking them away from the view. It gives them the precious minutes of advantage they need.

As the car slides onto its place, Stiles makes way just an inch to let the coming traffic out, and then pulling Derek inside when the coast clears. There is enough crowd that the subway is completely full, and Derek’s new outfit will certainly hide him better.

Derek has his head bowed low, shoulders hunched together tightly, trying to appear smaller as the people push and press against him. Stiles presses himself bodily against the wolf from the side, trying to cover him as much as he can. Derek doesn’t say anything about it, but the rigidness that isn't from pain only, apates just a little from his shoulders.

The doors finally pull closed, and Stiles sees all four hunters still on the platform, looking frustrated. It fills him both with insatiable glee as well as infinite rage. He has no idea who the men were, or why they were after Derek, but he sure as hell is going to find out.

 

 

When they resurface into the bitter, cold wind four stops later, Stiles still hasn’t let go of Derek’s wrist. He scans the traffic, noticing no visible hunters in the street view, and then ducks into the first sports shop he sees.

In there, he takes a look around before releasing the wolf from his hold, nodding towards the outdoor sportswear section. ‘’Get yourself some clothes. An outfit that will blend you into the mass, but something warm and something you’ll want to wear again, not just this once. I’ll pay for it.’’

To his surprise, Derek doesn’t argue. He goes silently, still hiding his face behind the cap of Stiles’ Mets cap. It would look ridiculous any other day, but not today. Not with how bruised and beaten down the wolf looks. He must’ve lost at least half of his weight in the past four years.

Shaking his head, Stiles digs around his bag for his wallet. The store looks a lot fancy, and is probably expensive. His phone has stayed deceptively quiet despite the knowledge of the hunters, and it’s making him nervous. The shop is relatively quiet, but the windows aren’t too big, so even if they’d have someone on their immediate trail, they probably won’t come inspect inside.

It takes barely three minutes for Derek to come back, holding in his arms a pair of running pants, a t-shirt, a hoodie, a winter jacket and a pair of gore-tex shoes. Practical, comfortable, and easy to move in. Stiles nods approvingly.

The cashier gives them a wide-eyed look, and Stiles offers him the charming grin he’s mastered, greeting him. He points his thumb over his shoulder.  ‘’Doing my good deed of the day, you know. He’s an old friend of mine, having a bit of a rough patch. Abusive boyfriend kicked him out, you know? So I gotta support my bro. Starting with getting actual shoes, ‘cause damn, Chad just locked him out out cold.’’

‘’Uh,’’ the cashier, _Paolo_ , says, ‘’I uh, that’s great, dude. I mean, horrible that his boyfriend would do that, but uh, great that you’ll help him out.’’ He seems a little lost at the sudden onslaught of information he doesn’t need. Or want, really. Poor customer service people. Stiles is glad he never got slabbed onto a barista position.

‘’Right?’’ Stiles frowns, grin sobering. ‘’It’s horrible what other people are capable of. A person you love should never raise a hand against you. That’s just wrong.’’

Paolo nods gravely, his face empathetic. ‘’There’s like, um, a safe house like, couple blocks from here if your friend needs anything? I think they at least offer some financial help or something,’’ the man says, as he rings up the items. They build up to a solid 400 dollars. Stiles offers his card. He doesn’t wince. Outwardly at least.

‘’We’ll definitely look into that, thank you so much. Especially if they’re rainbow friendly.’’

The cashier pulls up a plastic bag. ‘’It’s no problem. New York may be the place for new beginnings and all, but in a town like this there are a lot of rotten tomatoes mixed in. I, uh, also don’t want to, like, try and sell you too much, sir, but um, your friend doesn’t have socks, and gore-tex shoes kinda require ones if you want to wear them for the first week without blisters.’’

Stiles blinks. He looks at the packed shoes, to Derek’s bare feet, and back to the packed shoes. ‘’You know what, my buddy Paolo? Sold. Gimme your softest, most warmest pair of socks and I’ll take them.’’

‘’Great!’’ the guy enthuses, taking out a pair of durable looking socks. ‘’These are our best selling hiking socks. They’re tight, but not too much, and they can endure a month long hike throughout Mount Fuji. Tried and tested. Super comfortable.’’

‘’My man, that’s exactly what we want. Superb service, dude. I’ll be sure to send your supervisor some good feedback.’’

Paolo flushes, ducking his head, and mumbles a shy thank you. He rings them up and packs them everything, giving them an extra complementary pair of gloves and a neck scarf. They get the okay to let Derek change into the clothes right away, and Stiles takes back his good old jacket. Just the few minutes traipsing in the cold had him carving it back.

They manage to get back into Stiles’ apartment with no signs of the hunters tracking their trail. He trails off multiple texts, one of them which is for Danny. They share some of the lectures, and having a familiar face with him has been amazing. Plus, Danny is still the expert of hacking things, and is easily bribed.

Once he has the front door locked, he throws his bag onto the floor, focusing on his phone for a moment before finally turning to Derek.

The wolf hasn’t gotten much past the entryway, partly in Stiles’ living room since his studio apartment is so small. He’s standing there with a blank, faraway look in his eyes.

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles starts, shoving the device into his pocket. ‘’I have no idea what the fuck is going on, but -- ‘’ He doesn’t get any further than that, as his voice lures Derek’s unseeing eyes in to his direction, the man blinking a couple times before his eyeballs roll back, the wolf passing out on the floor. Stiles _hears_ the painful crack Derek’s skull makes as it impacts with the hardwood.

Stiles gapes for a moment, frozen in the half-attempt at catching the man, staring at Derek’s unconscious form spilled on his carpet, with the head only thing out of it. Derek has the _worst_ luck. When he finally finds his words after a moment of shocked silence though, he only has one. And it’s thoroughly heartfelt.

 _‘’Fuck_.’’

 

 

* * *

 

Deciding that Derek just needs to sleep things off for a moment, Stiles gets things done in the meanwhile. He orders delivery, thinking Subway sandwiches are probably a safe bet with Derek’s stomach. The man looks like he hasn’t eaten in a year. Possibly more. Probably more. Then he makes some coffee, just to revel in the smell of it whafting in his apartment. He’s buzzing from the energy drink already, and doesn’t need caffeine in his system for the moment. Danny sends him some files, containing the recent movements of the nearby hunter guilds. There are some deeply disturbing discrepancies with the information that’s been offered freely, and the information that’s been gathered by the street crowd.

Surprising amount of supernatural beings have migrated into the big apple, in the hopes of finding like-minded people, and a big portion of the adults are working in law enforcement jobs. The students and the street kids though, are the most vital in monitoring hunter activity. And thanks to some group effort, (and a little bribery) they created an app for all devices that alarm any supes from hunter activities nearby.

It’s an invite-only app, though, and carefully guarded, and so far has worked efficiently. Everyone is constantly pitching improvement suggestions, and, as annoying as it is to update it bi-weekly, the application has been a lifesaver.

Sighing, Stiles rubs his eyes, taking them off the computer screen for a moment. He lets his gaze wander over his shabby little apartment, and ends up at the only thing out of place, Derek’s sleeping face. He’d lugged the wolf into his bed, covering him with a blanket, figuring that eau de Stilinski would be familiar enough not to freak him out when he wakes up. Undressing an unconscious person has never been easy, and the fragility of Derek's body made him more apprehensive about using his strength. There’s blood slowly trailing down Derek’s neck, staining the pillow red from underneath. It seems painful, but by the looks of it, Derek must’ve gotten used to the spikes digging into his skin long enough to be able to sleep with the collar on his neck. Just the vague knowledge that he’s been wearing the collar long enough to adjust to it, sends a wave of nausea that sweeps over his stomach.

He keeps it at bay, though. He has a reign on his emotions. He’s going to _fix_ this. He has a plan now, thanks to Danny and couple of his coworkers, and to get it in motion only requires Derek to finally wake up.

But the wolf sleeps like the dead. Stiles has to get up a couple times just to check he’s actually breathing. It scares him a lot. He’s never seen Derek in such bad shape before. He’s got no idea how the man managed to drop off the grid so easily, only to surface time and time again more hurt than he previously left as. This takes the cake though.

He snatches his phone where it’s charging, and taps a quick text to Cora.

_[Hey. I found Derek in a pretty bad shape. You okay?] 11:48 am_

It goes unanswered, much like he thought it would. It used to take her sometimes hours to reply to a text. Though Derek was even worse off, taking days to reply to simple things. If one wanted immediate contact with the reclusive wolf, they’d have to call. To calls, Derek used to answer immediately if he was in the vicinity of his phone. Which he was, always.

He has to really think back to when he last contacted either Hale for anything. He doesn’t think he has done that in over two years. It’s a shame, since he’d learned to really like Derek and his deadpan humor, but FBI training and new friends and coworkers took a lot out of him socially, which made him slightly excluded from the pack in Beacon Hills. Not that there is a pack there anymore. After Scott left, forcing the other wolves to disperse into other packs, things in the town calmed down a lot. It had been almost eerie how the incidents just dropped with Scott’s departure, as if the True Alpha status would’ve been the magnet, the beacon for bad things.

Stiles mostly refuses to think about it.

An hour later, after Stiles has devoured his sandwich, he startles when Derek starts moving in the bed. He pads closer, carefully, and sees the signs of a nightmare for what they are. The wolf twitches and flinches, making involuntary sounds in his throat. He isn’t shifted, but Stiles doesn’t take any chances of getting mauled. He stays a feet or so away from the bed.

‘’Hey,’’ he says softly, ‘’Buddy, bud, Derek, wake up. Wake up, okay? It’s just a dream. C’mon, shh, you’re okay. Wake up.’’

There’s a whine, and then a gurgle, as Derek turns onto his side, the spikes of the shock collar digging deep into his throat. The wolf trashes awake, blindly trying to get away from whatever he had been witnessing in his dreams, only to collide painfully with the wall. His half shifted hands claw at the collar, like it’s choking him. He’s panicked, with labored breaths, and doesn’t seem to be seeing anything. Stiles is intimately familiar with that feeling.

‘’Derek, c’mon buddy. You know me. I’m Stiles. You’re safe. It was only a dream. Shh, you’re okay. You’re okay. Deep breaths, c’mon,’’ he cajoles, hands extended in both surrender to indicate he has no weapons, and in support. ‘’In, one deep breath, that’s it, hold it. There you go, you’re okay. And out, deep breath, just like that. Good, that’s good. I’m Stiles, and you’re Derek, and we’re at my apartment in New York. You’re safe. Take another deep breath, in, just like that, and hold. And then release. Good, great, that’s it.’’

He repeats the mantra for another good five minutes, he thinks, before Derek comes down enough to become fully aware of his surroundings.

‘’Wha --’’ Derek manages, before Stiles thrusts a glass of water in his hands.

‘’Drink,’’ he orders, brows furrowing in concern. The bruises that litter along the skin of Derek’s body are showing absolutely no signs of healing. He smells too, pretty foul actually, and the wounds along his neck are gruesome, and more alarmingly, not healing either.

The wolf obeys, taking small sips. He grimaces after each one, shaking his head, as if to clear it.

‘’Why are you not healing?’’ Demands Stiles quietly. He’s so used to wounds just closing up in record time that it’s seriously throwing him off the loop. It’s the first time Stiles sees the actual signs of the injuries Derek sports regularly. It’s easy to forget just how much violence has been painted against the wolf’s skin, when not even the most deadliest injuries sport visible scars. Everything just heals over, all of the abuse just wiped away.

‘’Too much, bane. Exposure. Been locked for - for - time. Long time,’’ Derek manages to whisper gravely. The words seem to grate at his injured throat, so Stiles subsides with the trillion questions he has.

‘’Is there anything I can do to help?’’ he offers instead, and Derek shakes his head.

‘’No. Need to - flush it out. Time. Heals.’’

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles says quietly, ‘’Okay. Do you, uh, how do you feel? Can you eat? Or shower. Or both, really. They’d do a lot to lower my freak-out levels. I have a tiny bath too, if you can’t stand for too long.’’

Derek takes a moment to take stock on himself, and decides to first try showering. Stiles can only hover impotently by the bed as Derek drags himself up, showing the perseverance of his own character and his werewolf abilities. Stiles would be jealous, but he isn’t, not really. He’s had his fair share of chances in taking the bite, and has refused every single time. He finds himself more useful as a human, and likes that he isn’t being hunted for just being himself. He knows he’d have a great control of his wolf if he did ever decide to take the offer, but all the Alphas he’s met have always grated at his nerves, and he dislikes the idea that he could lose bodily autonomy under a bad alpha. He’s done having his own control taken from him.

When they get situated inside the small bathroom, Derek strips from his clothes without preamble, and Stiles is too used to naked butts from his lacrosse years that he doesn’t even blink. There’s nothing sexual about the situation, and if Stiles would try to even hint at such thing, he’d no doubt be taking advantage of Derek.

And Derek’s been abused enough for a lifetime.

Instead he frowns, inspecting the collar. ‘’Is it a shock collar?’’

Derek nods, touching at it gently with his fingertips. ‘’They wielded it on,’’ he murmurs softly.

Stiles swears. ‘’Jesus. That must’ve been -- I can’t even imagine. Fuck.’’

Letting out a frustrated breath, Stiles takes a step back, even if all he wants is to step into Derek’s arms and just _hold_ the man. ‘’Maybe a bath? I don’t - I don’t want to electrocute you if the water makes it short circuit.’’

Agreeing, Derek steps into the bathtub, using Stiles as a human crutch. His fingers seem bony, the bones on his clavicle and shoulders clearly visible against his skin. As he settles down onto the bottom of the tub, Stiles starts the warm water. He thinks Derek might need some familiar scents right now, so he uses his own body wash, mixing it in the water. It’s stronger than the non-scented products, but fairly easy on the werewolf nose. Or so he’s been told.

He grabs a sponge from one of the cabinets, slathering it with soap and drops to his knees beside the tub. ‘’Okay. Here’s my plan. I’ll start with your back, and work your front and shoulders, and you can take care of your arms and legs. Then we’ll have to wash your hair with a towel draped around the collar, and when we’re done, I’ll use some wet wipes and try to clean up your neck. I have some ointments that I think would do you some good to have, since uh, we probably can’t get the damned thing off immediately, and they seem to reopen your wounds whenever you turn your head.’’

Getting a tiny nod in assent from the wolf, Stiles starts washing his back even before the water has reached Derek’s stick knees. He’s gentle, doing circular motions up and down, washing off the grime and old blood. There are burn marks and knife slashes, bruising on top of bruising, tear after tear of flesh ripped open. It’s gruesome and sick and fucking inhuman what the hunters have done to Derek, and Stiles swears that if he gets his hands on the men who laid their hands on the wolf, Stiles will match each mark with _double_ the pain.

The thought that he’s seriously considering torturing human beings for what has been done to his friends is so hysteric, and yet so painfully real and true to his character, that it almost sends him to a panic attack. His heartbeat accelerates, hands shaking where they keep themselves busy with spreading the soap all over.

He can almost hear the sick whispering of that certain ghost. Can hear it banging on doors, on windows. Chasing him through dark corridors, cornering him. Advancing on him.

 _Let me in_.

‘’Stiles?’’

Derek’s quietly murmured query snaps him out of it, dispersing the images of torn out bodies and bloody school classrooms, bringing him back to the present.

‘’Yeah,’’ he mumbles. He physically shakes his head, focusing on the matter at hand, forcing the ghost of the Nogitsune away. He’s not the victim this time, and he never will be, ever again. ‘’I’m here. God, your back looks so fucking awful. I thought that once you’d slept the four hours you did, you’d have a lot less of this visible, but nope. Still everything in its place.’’

Derek startles enough to force Stiles’ hands off his back. He lets them drop to wet the sponge again in the bathwater. ‘’I’ve been asleep for four hours?’’ the man croaks out. He can practically hear the fear in Derek’s voice. And how crazy it is that Stiles has learned to listen to that tiny tremor and recognize it for what it is?

‘’Yeah. Why?’’

‘’We have to leave. Leave now.’’ Derek springs himself up with surprising dexterity despite his condition, water dripping everywhere as he tries to exit the tub, but Stiles holds him back.

‘’Whoah, slow down, dude. Why do we have to leave? You’re still green and brown from places. And your neck --’’

‘’The hunters,’’ Derek grites out, ‘’A chip. In my back, They - They’ve been trailing me with it.’’

‘’Crap,’’ Stiles says. ‘’That’s why they’ve tracked you for so long. The only reason you couldn’t escape for once and for all. Why didn’t you tell me right away? I could’ve dug it out. Where is it?’’

When Derek doesn’t answer, Stiles tugs him back inside the tub, forcing him to sit down despite the obvious struggle the wolf attempts. ‘’It’s not inside your brain, is it? Or do you not know where it is?’’

‘’In my back, somewhere,’’ Derek answers, some anger coloring his voice. It’s a great reprieve from the withdrawn, pained sounds he’s offered so far. Anger is good, anger will invigorate him a little.  ‘’But we have to leave. Who knows how long they’ve known I’m here, and they might have surrounded the building and all its exits, they always find me, they keep showing up everywhere, heavily armed and with groups and you’re in _danger_ , Stiles, you _have to get out of here_.’’

Rolling his eyes, Stiles pats at Derek’s shoulder, placating. ‘’We’ve got a system against that sort of thing in my housing district. Which we’re in right now. It’s an FBI cover network thing, built to every single building where most of our agents frequent. The chip will send multiple signals all over the city if they activate it to try to pinpoint you. If they don’t get any surveillance videos in their hands, they’ll have no idea where you disappeared. Instead, they’ll have red dots blinking all over New York, and to parse through all of them, they’d need better tech than the US government works with. Definitely not gonna happen.’’

With each truthful heartbeat, the tension loosens from Derek’s shoulders, until they sag with relief. The porcelain squeaks under wolf’s skin when he shifts into a better position, no longer ready to bolt out the door. Stiles thinks it’s safe to continue.

‘’I can still take the microchip off of you. Destroy it once and for all.’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Derek says, subdued. ‘’Okay. It’s somewhere in the upper back, the shoulder area. Probably under a shoulder blade.’’

‘’Oh, yikes,’’ Stiles grimaces. ‘’This is gonna hurt, then.’’

Derek sighs, deep and resigned. ‘’Something I’m intimately familiar with.’’

‘’Well,’’ Stiles says with faked cheer,  ‘’we’ll just make sure this is the last time this sort of thing happens then. I’ll track the chip after we’re done with the bath and then dig it out. You’re at a high risk of attaining an infection from all of this gunk filled with bacteria, so we gotta clean you up first. To pass time as we do this, I’ll even let you in on a couple secrets we have, and it just might make your life a little easier. ’’

Stiles goes back to his ministrations of scrubbing the grime off, switching the water off as it reaches up enough. He starts to explain,

‘’So let me tell you about the greatest invention we created with my FBI school buddies and Danny. After me and Danny kinda reconnected here, me finding the supernatural circles and he the tech geek ones, we kinda got together one night, bitching about these lame ass kids who keep attacking and scaring some of our non-human friends. They turned out to be hunter kids, trying to impress their peers with capturing 'feral supes' and possibly killing them. We weren't happy how unsafe everyone started to feel around campus, so we cracked our wise heads together and created an invite-only app. It’s a real-time tracker of hunters for the supernatural community. Some of the hunter guilds are happy to provide information to us, since they only hunt those who harm humans, but a lot of them are a lot more tight lipped than that. At that point, we were at an impasse. How do we offer support and security for the non-humans around when some hunters turn rogue pretty easily?

‘’ So, get this, after I kind of connected with the FBI unit I interned for, I got to know some pretty high-up supes. And from there on, I also got to know some hunters, though those idiots had no idea they were working with the people they hate. Whatever. So I decided, with Danny's help, to clone the hunters’ phones, and then got a lot of info off of them before they even realized it was happening, warned bunch of guys that they had stalkers that would ‘ _put an arrow to their knee_.’ Surprisingly, every single one of them got the reference, so I gained a lot of trustworthy friends throughout the city. I’ve got street kids monitoring the hunters in real-time whom everyone pays for their efficient work, law-enforcement adults offering more crime statistics data, and then I’ve got the tech geeks who work their magic.

‘’After we launched the app, we’ve got even more day-to-day info that the users sometimes provide, and we’ve got different alerts for different emergencies. We’ve even rated the hunters in categories of who’s someone you can have a civil talk to, and who’s someone you need to steer clear from.  You can only get the invitation from the moderators, which we are a five-headed group, and you need a referral. So far though, it’s only working in New York, but if things go well, we might launch it to work in other states too. I can invite you to it, if you want, so next time you’ll be fending off hunters from your trail, you’ll know which streets to avoid.’’

Derek doesn’t answer, but his head cocks in a way that Stiles thinks he’s listening. He’s scrubbing meticulously every inch of his skin, clearly happy to be rid of the stench of wherever the hell the hunters have been holding him.

The conversation about Derek’s phone makes Stiles frown, his trail of thought latching onto Cora’s unanswered text.

‘’Hey, also, do you know if Cora’s alright? She hasn’t been answering my texts. I sent her that I found you, and asked if she was alright. Do you know where she is? She wasn’t with you when you -- ‘’ he trails off when he feels Derek’s muscles go rigid under his palms, mood sombering in an instant.

‘’She won’t answer you,’’ Derek says curtly, quietly. He leans away from Stiles’ touch, grabbing the shower head in order to rinse himself off. The ease of his shoulders is gone, replaced for a closed off expression.

‘’Why?’’ Stiles asks bluntly. He was so sure the Hale were building a new, happy future for themselves in Argentina, savaging bunnies and making bad life choices with alcoholic beverages rather than moody, self-absorbed teenagers.

There’s a tense quiet minute where Stiles stands back, letting Derek wash off the suds of the soap, the man seeming to gather his thoughts. There are times that he wishes he was a wolf, so he could just smell the goddamn chemosignals and know exactly what the other person is feeling, rather than being left on the guessing game with his puny human senses.

After a moment, Derek sighs, turning the shower off and placing it on the handle. His hair and face is still grimy with things Stiles forces himself not to think about, lest he throw up and traumatize Derek some more with his inappropriate reactions to the wolf’s horrible experiences.

‘’She found out. About me.’’

Stiles blinks at the non-sequitur. ‘’Found out about what?’’

‘’Who set the fire.’’

He cocks his head, squinting at the man. ‘’That Kate set it? I thought everyone knew. I thought _she_ knew, after, you know. Everything.’’

Agitated, Derek blows his next breath from his nose. ‘’She knew who set the fire already before. She found out about _me_.’’

‘’I’m sorry,’’ Stiles says, genuinely meaning it, ‘’But you’ve lost me. She found out _what_ about you?’’

‘’About me and Kate,’’ he replies, voice hoarse. ‘’She found out who let her in. Who I was to her, how I let her get close. How I murdered our pack.’’

Everything comes to a screeching halt within Stiles’ brain for a moment. He gapes for at the man, grasping for a reply adequate enough to handle the delicacy of the statement. He probably fails the second the words are out of his mouth, but he isn’t a psychiatrist, and honestly, all of it, the survivor’s guilt, the past trauma, all of that paints a pretty good picture of what Derek most likely thinks about himself. Which isn’t at all good.

‘’Derek,’’ Stiles says slowly, carefully, ‘’You were fifteen. Fourteen? The first time you met her. You were a _child_ . She _used_ you --’’

But Derek doesn’t want to hear the words, because he’s shaking his head vehemently. The spikes dig deep again, reopening any clotted vessels, forming small rivers of red trailing down the man’s naked length.

‘’It was my fault. All of it. There were all those signs, the scents and the lies and _secrecy_ . I should’ve known, I should’ve realized what she was, we were _taught_ to recognize the neon sings of a hunter trying to approach us. It was just, after losing Paige, she was such a breeze of fresh air. She didn’t try to -- ‘’

‘’Okay, stop. Derek, stop. Shut the fuck up. None, okay, _none_ of that was your fault. You were grieving, vulnerable. And most importantly, you were a fifteen year old kid to her, what, twenty four? She was a pedophile, a predator, _an adult_ , and she used you because she knew exactly what to say and what to do to gain your trust. You said it yourself. She was experienced, older, and a fucking psychopath. If she hadn’t managed to get through you, she would’ve gone through a different route. She could’ve used _Cora_ as her target. Would you have blamed your little sister for letting Kate in, for trusting an adult, and having that turned on her just because the adult she confined in turned to be a mass murderer?’’

Derek looks away, his jaw clenching. His hands are balled in fists, emotions warring against each other. There’s grief and guilt and so much _hurt_ there that it pains Stiles just to watch it.

‘’It wasn’t your fault,’’ he adds, more softly this time. ‘’I know you don’t believe me. Carrying that kind of guilt for years on your shoulders has engraved the idea into your bones. But I’m speaking the truth. Your family, your pack dying, was not your fault.’’

He’s not even touching the part where Cora has apparently abandoned her brother altogether after certain things from the past have come to light. He’s sure that partly it’s from Derek’s poor delivery, his self-loathing probably coloring the story, making it distorted and painting him in a horrible light. It would be exactly Derek’s forte, to try and do the good thing, only to have his gruff, self-discriminating presentation of himself break the trust of the listener before he’s even started.

He turns away, letting Derek gather himself in peace and busies himself in gathering the necessary items for their next task. He needs at least two towels if he wants to wash Derek’s hair without any accidental electrocutions. He’s not even sure whether or not wetting the damn thing would force out a lethal dose of electricity to kill the wolf carrying the collar.

When he thinks enough time has passed for Derek to have gathered the trashed pieces of his heart together, he turns back around, dangling the towels in his hands.

‘’Ready for the next step?’’

Derek looks uncertain under the blank facade he’s painted on his face, but he nods.

Stiles wills his hands not to shake. He won’t let himself be the reason for Derek’s death. Because he said he was going to fix things, and so he _will_.

  


 

An hour later, they’re sitting on Stiles’ bed, Stiles tapping away on his computer as Derek tears out small pieces of his tuna sub, trying to force the food down his torn throat. They’re clad in fresh clothes, though Stiles had practically shoved one of his dirty t-shirts in Derek’s hands, making him wear the thing underneath all the other garments. He’s too afraid to ask Derek of his anchor, and he knows familiar scents will ground him.

It’s pitiful, how Stiles’ shirt hangs loose from Derek’s arms, his broad shoulders no longer rounding them with the added muscle mass. The sweatpants he loaned to the wolf look to be too big too, and Stiles is lanky, okay, he has hidden muscle in his lithe body and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be the size what Derek once was, but the wolf’s current weight is just sad, as it is alarming.

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles says finally, pushing the laptop off his front. ‘’Here’s the thing. For me to get all the data I need to catch these guys, I need to know when, where and what time you think they took you, and the reason, if you know it. Then I’ll be able to form a map of your travel, the timetable of your captivity, and probably even some logs from some hunter guilds that keep them electronic.’’

Clearing his throat, Derek digs another pickle out of his sandwich, the motion of moving his head or throat no longer puncturing the skin, thanks to Stiles’ dedicated long fingers. They managed to wrap a bandage around the skin where it kept getting torn open, and Stiles even slathered the puncture wounds with some salve that he thinks will decrease the chance of an infection.

‘’I left Cora’s pack somewhere mid-August, two years after I departed from Beacon Hills. She uh. We didn’t part in good terms. The environment got too hostile for me, so I just. Left.’’

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles says, dragging the computer back in front of him, tapping the info onto a document. ‘’Where did you go then?’’

Derek shrugs. ‘’I just packpacked here and there. I got back to the US somewhere in November, I think. Landed near South-Carolina and walked on foot for a month. Then I got some vans following me for a week or two after I crossed the border to Alabama. They caught me in a small town restaurant, hunting a family business in the whole damn county. Nobody batted an eyelash when they tased me down and shoved into a black van.’’

Stiles doesn’t even flinch at the info, but he knows his scent will reveal the rage. ‘’Right, so they took you down in Alabama. That was somewhere in January, you think? Approximately two and a half years ago? It’s October now.’’

Nodding, he tears another piece of mushy bread. ‘’After that, I’ve no idea how long I stayed in one place. They took me into three different huge facilities where they caged me in with other supes, and then I circulated in smaller basements for the amusement of whomever got me on their rotation.’’

‘’Okay. That’s. Can you remember any names you heard? Did any certain smells stick to you? Did the hunters have accents, what color their skin was, their body build?’’

‘’All of them were white. Mostly nationalists, saw confederate flags a lot. I don’t. I don’t really remember everything. The memory sometimes just. Blacks out, like an old film,’’ Derek confesses, and Stiles has to close his eyes in order to keep in the scream he wants to release.

‘’Jesus fucking christ, Derek,’’ he swears thickly. ‘’How are you -- How are you even functioning right now? How the fuck did you escape, how do you always preserve, no matter the obstacle?’’

And for the first time, Stiles actually peeks in into the desperation, the depression and exhaustion that he thinks would’ve made him crumble far earlier than what it has Derek. It’s clear in the depths of Derek’s eyes, the bleakness of them.

‘’Oh my God, just come here, you fucking numbnuts. I need to, we Stilinskis, dude, we hug things out. Come on. I have to -- ‘’ And before Derek can even think of uttering a word of protest, Stiles launches himself onto the wolf, careful of his wounds, but so glad to be able to touch and feel. To have physical evidence that he is really in there in his apartment.

The wolf only gives an _‘oof_ ,’ before his arms circulate to hug Stiles gently back, his other hand still holding onto his food. Stiles refuses to let him go for a moment, squeezing not too gently.

Then he gives a couple manly claps on the man’s shoulder, still careful of his pinched skin, before withdrawing.

He clears his throat. ‘’Okay. So, I think I got enough data to send to Danny, and then he’ll work some excel magic on it, giving us a somewhat accurate time schedule. We’ll have to list all of the little things you heard or saw, so we can figure out all the places where they’ve been holding you in. A map of hunter territories, list of families, friend and foe. We are aware of at least two hunter facilities where they keep caged supes to experiment on them. They’re illegal, in all the fucking ways, but that doesn’t stop them from having them. We busted a couple of them, and they just relocated, the fuckers. Essentially, though, they’ll always be using either huge underground basements, or big factory halls, which offer us some incentive as to where the next torture chamber is gonna be kept in.’’

‘’And what does my imprisonment have anything to do with this?’’

Stiles stares at the man, wide-eyed, disbelieving. ‘’Are you kidding me? If we can pick out a pattern of your unsolicited travel, we can get some deeper information about the facilities they use, and which hunter guilds are well connected, and which are more private and hostile to others surrounding their territories.’’

‘’And what good will that information do?’’ Derek asks blankly. ‘’ It’s not like it’ll stop anyone from killing our kinds in cold blood. When they realize you have all of that, they’ll just scour out the rats, eliminate them, and start hiding better. Or maybe even turn more violent.’’

Brushing his fingers through his hair, Stiles scowls. ‘’Well, it’s not like sitting on our hands and watching by as other wolves and fairies get slaughtered will do us any good. We can learn to be smart about this. There’s a whole bunch of actual law enforcement people ready to guide us to safe grounds. We have to be like the ley lines underneath the Nemeton. Unnoticed for those who do not know they exist, but great source of power for those who know. Surely you understand the need to keep loved ones safe?’’

At that, Derek promptly shuts up, looking away. Stiles blows a raspberry.

‘’Look,’’ he says, ‘’I want these people dead for what they did to you, okay? I want them tortured and humiliated and murdered, with no gravesites put up for them. I want no songs sung for them, no flowers or condolences to their families. I want to burn their bodies to ashes so that nobody will be able to resurrect them because there will be no body for them to return to, do you understand? I want to see with my own eyes that their lives leave their eyes. But before they get granted the sweet, sweet cradle of death, I’ll want them screaming in fear and pain. I want nobody to experience even the half of what you've gone through, and I'll make it happen. Just watch me.’’

‘’Why are you so angry on my behalf?’’ Derek asks quietly.

‘’Because it’s about damn time _someone_ is,’’ Stiles says fiercely. ‘’I’m _done_ staying on the sidelines when others hurt you, use you or manipulate you. I won’t stand for it anymore. I don’t have that many close familial people left, or even close friends left. And those that are still here, I’ll do my best to protect them, even if that sometimes means I’ll have to protect them from themselves.’’

Derek stares at him openly, like it’s the first time he’s actually _seeing_ him. Like he’s looking past all of their interactions, puzzling out the pieces that he’s somehow missed before this. He’s not like Scott, Derek has known since the beginning that Stiles will go to _any_ length in order to keep his family and friends safe, even if it means killing someone. It’s the first time he’s realizing that it extends to _him_ too. Derek may not have ever been Scott McCall’s pack, but he was pack to Stiles in all the ways it mattered.

Silence descends over them, broken only by Stiles’ ragged breathing. Derek too, takes a breath that stutters a little, before he closes his eyes with a pained expression.

‘’Okay,’’ Derek says eventually, his voice thick. ‘’Okay,’’ he repeats. ‘’I can try and piece out my memories for any clues of my captor’s identifications.’’

‘’Thank you.’’

Nodding, Derek swallows. ‘’So what now?’’

‘’Now,’’ Stiles sighs, ‘’We have to go uncover my Jeep from the underground parking palace, and make a goddamn road trip back to Beacon Hills. We have to get that thing off your neck, which I can’t do with any of the tools I have here. I think my dad might have some pretty cool things in his garage though. Leftovers from his attempts at becoming a mechanic and a wood carpenter. And then we gotta dig out your microchip, which will be easier with two sets of hands and some werewolf morphine.’’

Derek looks wary. ‘’Shouldn’t we take the chip out _before_ we hit the road? The hunters will be on our trail faster than you can say ‘Alabama.’’’

‘’Nah,’’ he flips his hand in response. ‘’We want them on our trail. New York is a little bit too crowded and tricky to take on your current leeches, but if we can lure them into the preserve?’’ Stiles flashes him a wide, predatory grin. ‘’Then we’ll have home field advantage.’’

  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your responses to this fic have been overwhelming! I'm in awe, honestly. Thank you so much!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter, I'm suddenly feeling very nervous, haha!
> 
> Thank you for all of your lovely comments and kudos, I cherish _every single one_ of them. 
> 
> Not beta read.

Stiles looks mournfully at his jacket. The inside of it is covered almost entirely in red spots, the fabric clearly unsalvageable. It looks pretty gruesome, honestly. If he’d applied some salt on top of the ruined spots the second he’d gotten the garment off of Derek, he  _ may  _ have rescued the jacket. Maybe.

Though the way the blood has smeared and been absorbed into the fabric, the old trick might’ve not even worked.

He sees Derek watching, the man looking awkward and constipated, which means he’s feeling guilty. So Stiles dumps the garment carelessly on the bathroom floor, in front of his tiny washing machine and grabs another, slightly lighter jacket from his clothes rack. The wolf doesn’t need any more reasons to feel bad about  _ anything _ . 

And besides, California will be dozen times warmer, thank god, so really, the jacket is only needed for a short time for their road trip.

Derek has his new clothes inside a plastic bag, those closest to his skin now bloodied and useless too. He’s still wearing the worn sweatpants, but had asked for another shirt to bundle up in, so he’s clad in Stiles’ softest sweater with the FBI logo sewn in the front. Derek looks like he’s drowning in it, but he seems happy enough. The camo jacket on top is an odd combination, but somehow the wolf still rocks it. 

‘’You good?’’ Stiles asks, once they’ve migrated to the front door, their bags packed. He gets a nod of assent, so he grabs his Jeep’s keys and heads out. 

The building holds an underground parking lot for its inhabitants, and since the city is rather difficult to navigate through with a car, Stiles hasn’t used his baby much, apart from trips outside the city lines. He prays it will start without any engine problems.

The elevator blings, doors opening to reveal the huge lot with cars in multiple rows. The parking spots are numbered with register plates, so that reserved spaces won’t be for the use of the public visitors. His Jeep rests at the very end of the hall, but almost directly in front of the entrance. It’s covered with a black sheet, and the sheet has covered a layer of grey dust.

Derek stays on the side as Stiles uncovers his car, the man still gingerly holding himself up, like every movement hurts everywhere, his scowl more out of pain than anything else. 

Stiles whistles at the cloud of dust blowing up. ‘’Damn, I forgot how much dirt migrates down here.’’ He balls the sheet into a clump and cranks the trunk open, shoving it in. There’s still some of his old lacrosse gear taking up space. He pushes them aside and pulls their bags to the floor. The door creaks ominously as he locks it back down, making him cringe. He should probably oil it again.

Dusting his hands, he gestures towards the passenger side to Derek. ‘’Alright, just hop in. It shouldn’t be too dirty in there, I had it cleaned up, like, a year ago or so. If you need more leg space, you need to reach down to pull the lever underneath the seat and just push the seat back.’’

Derek doesn’t say anything, but he does climb in, though the process is painfully slow and awkward. Stiles is hit with the sense of deja vu as he settles behind the wheel, the memory of Derek occupying the same space years back, just as bloody and miserable, flooding his mind. Back then Stiles had threatened the wolf with leaving him to the side of the road as he was dying from the wolfsbane bullet, pissy about Derek’s lack of manners, of the lack of  _ asking  _ instead of demanding, then not yet thinking of Derek someone as worthy of protection. Now, when he thinks back to that, he feels guilty, and a lot angry with himself. Because Derek _ as his friend i _ s still shy of asking for anything, and the Derek back then was damaged, grieving and lonely, probably thinking that if he didn’t demand for things, nobody would’ve listened him, or come for his aid. Which sadly was true. 

But the present is different. Since he cannot go back in time and change things, make everyone’s lives a little easier by trusting Derek, he’s determined to do it now. Even with distance within the past years between the two of them, Derek has earned his place in Stiles’ heart, over and over, and that will not wane. Derek is pack, and pack protects its members.

He glances at the wolf shifting around to find a comfortable position next to him, pained grimace on his face, even as the man tries hiding it. Stiles reaches to the back, grabbing a thick, soft, woollen quilt from the backseat that has been saturated with his scent, and offers it to Derek.

‘’Here,’’ he says, pushing the orange monstrosity into Derek’s confused hands. ‘’Your trip might be slightly more comfortable if you’re wrapped in that. The cushions on that seat aren’t as stellar as they used to be.’’

As Derek takes it, his expression blank, Stiles gives him a grin and a wink. ‘’I’ve practically lived in this Jeep. I know how hard the seats are. With your injuries, the ride can turn out to be really tough after awhile. Especially if we have to take some bumpy detours to side roads when we get far enough, out from the bustle of the city. Wouldn’t want more broken bones on top of the healing you’re still trying to do right now.’’

‘’It will get bloody,’’ Derek says blankly, voice soft. 

Stiles shrugs. ‘’That’s why I pay for superb cleaning services. Or maybe I should get a new upholstery. These are more than a decade old, and my baby could do with some upgrading. What’s some new blood on top of the old one?’’

Derek sighs, but complies, slowly and carefully maneuvering himself to settle the quilt all over the seat, before wrapping his frame in it too. When he’s done, Stiles leans over him to click the man’s seatbelt on, before doing the same to himself.

‘’Now we can go,’’ he declares, and cranks the keys into the cognito. The Jeep flares to life, the engine sputtering and grumbling, before it gives a little  _ screech _ , and starts rumbling evenly.

‘’Good job, baby!’’ Stiles cheers, patting the steering wheel. ‘’I knew you had it in you, Roscoe. You won’t ever fail me, will you?’’

Ignoring the raised eyebrow he gets for his declared affections, he switches the radio on and reverses out of his space, driving into the grey snowfall.

  
  
  


It takes an hour of smooth cruising and a repeat of the top 50 pop list before Derek’s head finally lolls to its side, the wolf sinking to a deep slumber. He marvels a little at the trust Derek is putting in his hands. He’s not sure how long the man’s been on the run, apart from the very obvious, but he’d have thought the hypervigilance would’ve forced Derek’s brain to keep him awake, since the danger is literally on their heels. When Stiles had been missing, he’d heard from Isaac how Derek had been out in the woods, searching for him for three days straight, nearly falling with exhaustion on the fourth morning. He’d been surprised at the news, and also not. Derek is the kind that will prevail, will try to do good by a person he deems close to his heart, even when the people really wouldn’t deserve it.

So to be given this, the vulnerable part that trusts Stiles to protect Derek while he sleeps, seems like a huge milestone on their friendship. Something worth celebrating.

Stiles thinks darkly that he’ll want to celebrate by decapitating some hunters. 

It’s been awhile since he’s eaten, his caterwauling stomach reminding him. There hasn’t been any sign of anyone tailing them yet, so he drives out of the highway the next time he sees a Burger King sign. 

As he pulls to the drive-through, after placing his order, he realizes a little too late how the state of his companion must look to an outsider. He grimaces, quickly pulling the quilt up to cover Derek’s neck to hide the collar, before rolling to the window. If someone asks, he’ll just go with the same cover story he used with Paolo. Consistency is the key.

‘’Hi, welcome to Burger King. Your order was a Whopper meal with two .. ‘’ the male employee trails off his greeting as he bends down a little to see inside the car, catching sight of Derek’s beaten face, expression growing alarmed. He stammers, ‘’Uh, sorry, I, two sets of large fries and two large drinks, with an added crispy chicken burger and a tendergrill chicken sandwich. The total is 18,97.’’

Stiles swipes his card up between his two fingers. ‘’Debit please.’’

‘’Thank you, sir.’’ The employee takes the card and chips it into the machine, giving it back. He looks back and forth between his till and Derek. ‘’Is uh, your friend alright?’’

‘’He’s fine,’’ Stiles says brusquely, straining his hand to reach the pin code. He sighs internally, knowing there’s no way to squirm out of this. Consistency, he repeats to himself. Looking straight to the employees eyes, he leans closer. ‘’Look, I’ve just busted him out of an abusive relationship. It’s taken me a year to convince him to leave his partner, and now that I have, I won’t hesitate to escape the  _ damn  _ county to drive him back to his family and out of his ex-partner’s reach.’’

The machine beeps, indicating him to take his card back, which he does. The employee nods, eyes a little wide. He offers Stiles the receipt, and then he reaches to give out the meals.

‘’Thank you and have a good day, sir.’’

Stiles grunts, putting the paper bags in the back, though not before fishing the whopper and a coke for himself. Then he exits the restaurant, checking the surroundings for any tell-tale black SUV’s. He sees none. 

He frowns a little, thinking how Derek said that they were efficiently tracking him all the time. The fact that they’re not doing that now seems suspicious. Unless the cover he had for his apartment had sent a bunch of them on a loose goose chase, in which case he’d understand that the hunters are taking their time to check every single blinking dot on their map.

Derek sleeps, blissfully unaware of his surroundings. Knowing how much healing takes its toll on the wolf, he’s glad that he’s able to catch a few z’s. It’s just a little surprising the he didn’t even flinch in his slumber over the loud noises while Stiles took his order.

Interesting..

 

Since he’s uncertain whether or not the Burger King employee made his good deed of the day and informed the police of suspicious activity, Stiles takes the downtime opportunity and asks Siri to call his dad.

The sheriff answers in three rings. ‘’Beacon Hills police department, Sheriff Stilinski speaking.’’

‘’Hey, dad,’’ Stiles greets him. ‘’How’s the station life? Busy?’’

John sighs. ‘’More than I’d like, but less than average. Is everything alright?’’

‘’No,’’ Stiles says honestly.  He’s learned to tell his father the truth. The sheriff is more level-headed of the two, deeply grounded to the earth, a contrast to his son who is brash and impulsive, which makes them a good team when they have to work together. Like now. And since he’s doing actual police business, he figured he should call directly to the station, regardless whether or not his dad was working. Parrish has taken a seat as the deputy sheriff, acting as the head of the house whenever John isn’t available, and he would’ve been just as useful in this situation, if not more so. ‘’Found Derek while I was attempting to get to school this morning. He’s -- Well. Not healing, is the word I’m looking for, but beaten to a goddamn bloody pulp is maybe a little more accurate description for  _ you _ .’’

The sheriff swears. ‘’You mean Derek Hale?’’ John asks, as if they know more than one Derek. ‘’How badly are we talking here? Because if something is happening that you need help with, you know how little my jurisdiction means in a big city like New York.’’

Swallowing, he taps a little his wheel. ‘’He looks really bad off, dad. He has a  _ shock collar _ . They’ve wielded on. Spiced it with sharp metal spikes that keep tearing open the skin on his throat. We couldn’t get it off of him in my apartment, so he’s still wearing it. And I’m calling  _ you _ , because we’re on our way back to California. We’re positive that the hunters are closing in on us, and while that isn’t a problem for you, and certainly not for us either, the issue I’m having is that a Burger King employee might have called the cops on us because of Derek’s, well, pretty horrifying appearance. I’m letting you know in case we get pulled over and questioned, so I can just tell them to call you on your office for a solid alibi.’’

There’s a very telling pause where he thinks his father is squishing down his rage. The sheriff’s voice is deadly calm when he asks, ‘’And what is this alibi you need from me? How badly beaten are we talking about here? Shouldn’t he be healing, being a werewolf and all?’’

Sighing, Stiles looks to make sure Derek still sleeps, before he answers. ‘’He got captured by some rogue hunters some two or two and a half years ago,’’ he explains.

_ ‘’ _ Two and a half  _ years  _ ago?’ _ ’  _ John asks in alarm.

‘’Yeah,’’ he agrees a little hysterically in response, carding his fingers through his hair in an agitated gesture. ‘’Good I’m not the only one thinking it’s insane. What even is his life? I mean,  _ really _ ? And nobody noticed? Not even Cora?’’ The conflict between the siblings, perhaps, Stiles thinks, was the major contributor in Derek’s disappearance and capture. And if Cora  _ had  _ noticed her brother’s sudden lack of contact, because even when Derek is angry, he wants to know that everyone is still doing okay and he  _ will  _ check in from time to time, why hadn’t she asked around? Why didn’t she contact anyone in Beacon Hills to see if her brother surfaced from the radio silence back to society? The way Stiles had seen the reunion and the aftermath of it, was that both of the Hales had been relieved and ecstatic to find a sibling, a member of their family,  _ pack _ , alive, and this hostility and uncaring of the other is beyond odd.  _ Even  _ in the light that Cora might hold Derek responsible for the fire.

‘’Ugh, so, long story short, I dragged him away from the station he’d tried hiding in and took him to my apartment to escape from the hunters whom were on his trail. I’ve been forced to tell the couple witnesses we’ve interacted with that I rescued him from an abusive relationship and am taking him home to his family, just fyi, if anyone asks. The truth, though, is a little more horrifying. Derek’s  almost entirely non-verbal, unless prompted to speak. Though that’s more of the collar, I think, than any brain damage thing. Though I guess it could be brain damage too? His hair was matted with blood and questionable chunks when he washed himself. Can werewolf healing repair injured brain? I mean, epilepsy and asthma are both a little tricky to fight off with just the immune system and even medication isn’t always effective, but brain is another tricky organ altogether..” He trails off, muttering, before his father prompts him to continue, and he jumps back on topic. ‘’Uhh, right, what else. Um, he’s also severely underweight and undernourished. He looks to be in some really severe pain, even when he sleeps. Hits to the head and torso have been repeated enough that he’s got bruises on top of bruises. His arms are more blue and purple than anything else. I think he’s been burned, or at least badly electrocuted enough to leave burn marks, and there’s some super inhuman slashes throughout his back, like someone was using a dull knife to practice stabbing. I don’t -- I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like they’ve been torturing him just for the fun of it, not even experimenting his limits or anything.’’

‘’Jesus,’’ John says quietly. ‘’And you’re saying he isn’t healing?’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Stiles confirms. ‘’He told me he was infused with so much wolfsbane that it slowed everything down. Needs to flush it out, apparently.’’

‘’Well, at least he  _ will  _ heal, even if it takes time. That seems reassuring to me.’’

‘’I guess,’’ Stiles says. ‘’But, yeah, that’s why I’m calling. So if someone calls you, asking about it, just tell them that I’m taking Derek back to Beacon Hills because his boyfriend was an abusive piece of shit and we got him out before he almost got killed.’’

‘’Uh-huh. Are we going on a first name basis, or are we just talking about a general boyfriend here? You know you’ll have a more believable story -- ‘’

‘’I have a name, dad,’’ Stiles says, rolling his eyes. ‘’I called the partner ‘Chad’ to Paolo, our first witness I had to speak with, just throwing any douchebag name out there, but actually, one of the hunters that have participated in Derek’s torture  _ is  _ named Chad, and there is footage and logs of Derek’s imprisonment in his property, the evidence courtesy of Danny, so we can totally drag him down as the abuser. Chad Weinstein. If you need his social security number, ring Danny. He’ll get it for you.”

‘’Chad Weinstein,’’ John repeats, clearly writing the name down. ‘’Okay. That’s good. Any other nuances I should be aware of?’’

‘’Well, I still haven’t got a clue when or from where Derek escaped, but since I found him this morning, I think we should use that time frame as to when he escaped Chad. Which reminds me, they’ve also got Derek chipped, hence why they’re so insistently on our trail, so we’re luring them out to the preserve, and -- Well. You don’t have to hear the rest of it. I haven’t planned it all out yet, but.’’

‘’Yes, no, don’t tell me anything more. I don’t want to hear of any of your plans on how to deal with the hunters. Assuming that we’re only dealing with one or two people here.’’

Stiles makes a face. ‘’Not exactly.’’

There’s a moment of silence where Stiles imagines his dad pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘’What do you mean,  _ not exactly _ ?’’

‘’What I  _ mean _ , is that there are multiple hunter communities guilty of circulating Derek around as a punching bag, off to another basement or cage however they saw fit. There are electronic logs and diaries of part of them, apparently. Danny didn’t really elaborate, but he did say he threw up after three pages, not even daring to venture into the video footage, so I’m guessing it’s something really fucking spectacular. Case point, the shock collar.’’

‘’So what, you’re just going to go after a dozen hunting families and their complicit friends for hurting Derek?’’ John asks incredulously. ‘’Son, that’s  _ insane _ . They’re trained to kill, for God’s sake. When you take care of even just one person, do you think that the other’s won’t immediately be alarmed? And how will you know who has participated in it, and who hasn’t, if there are entire families involved?’’

‘’Anyone who participated, anyone who knew it was happening, and everyone who only stood by, letting it happen, is going to be held accountable. Whether I give this off to the head of the FBI and start an investigation, or I take care of it with some more unconventional help, the people who have laid their hands on Derek will not get out of it, not with money, not with power,’’ Stiles says darkly. ‘’It’s not like I’m going to just, you know, start killing people. That’s not how the system works.’’

‘’Then how  _ does it  _ work?’’ John asks, frustrated. ‘’Because to me, it sounds like you’re making this huge decision rather heedlessly and risking your own life in the process of it, just because they had --’’

‘’If you end that sentence saying _ ‘just because they had Derek, _ ’ I swear to god I will end this call right here and now. He was captive, a victim, for over _ two years. _ You’ve served in the army. You’ve been on the battlefield, you know how cruel the torture there can be. So imagine that torture, multiply it by like a trillion, and add advanced healing on top. They’ve kept him like a slaughter-ready cattle, they’ve -- They’ve --’’ he can’t even finish the sentence, fierce, burning rage blocking his throat. He grips the wheel so hard his knuckles go white, the leather bending. 

He takes in ragged, angry breaths, trying to calm himself down. He glances at Derek, and sees him asleep still, but sporting an agitated frown. He’s scenting the chemosignals, and reacting to them in his dreams.

Shit.

He lowers his voice. ‘’Look, I’m . . I’m sorry. But dad. Imagine if.. Imagine if it was  _ me  _ in Derek’s shoes. You told me -- You told me you would burn down the entire station to protect me. Is Derek not worthy of our protection? He’s -- He’s helped us out, so many times. You can’t even deny that, because he’s saved  _ your  _ life a dozen times in the past, just as he has saved mine. Do you really not think --’’

‘’Stiles,’’ John interrupts gruffly. ‘’It’s okay. I understand. Of course - Of course Derek is worthy of being protected. No question about that. I’m glad that you’re doing everything in your power to help him out of a terrible situation. I didn’t mean to imply anything other than that I’m worried that you’re getting into this war between hunters and supernaturals  _ alone _ . I’m afraid for your life because you’re my son. My  _ only _ son. And I don’t want to lose you just because you went into this blindly, too fast and uncertain of your opponent’s real strength, with nobody at your back.  _ That  _ is what I was trying to say.’’

Warmth floods into Stiles’ chest, melting some of the ice flowing through his veins. ‘’I’m not at all alone. I’ve got the best backup in the whole world, and though I’m alone  _ now _ , doesn’t mean I will be when we get back to Beacon Hills. I promise you dad. I mean, geez, I have the best strategic and tactic team on my speed dial. We’re polishing things up, and cross my heart, we’re not going into this without plan B, plan C, plan D, and any other alphabet you want me to recite.’’

John sighs in obvious relief. ‘’Well. That  _ is  _ reassuring to hear. Thank you. I’ll do my part and ring Danny for some more information. Right about where are you at the moment?’’

‘’Somewhere in Pennsylvania. We passed a sign for Pocono Lake Preserve like, twenty minutes ago, if that means anything to you.’’

‘’So you left only a couple hours ago?’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Stiles confirms. ‘’So it’ll take us at least two days to reach Fresno, and then drive down to Beacon Hills. The usual route.’’

‘’Uh-huh. You’re not the only one driving right? I know Derek’s there, but anyone else? Danny?’’

Snorting, Stiles shakes his head. ‘’Just me and Derek. Derek’s asleep right now, and we’ve barely made any miles out yet, so I’ll be fine for awhile. If he heals enough, I think we’d be good to trade, but I don’t know if he has any muscle power to even press down the pedals right now. Dunno, we’ll figure something out. And besides, I’ve done this trip a dozen times alone in the past couple years, so it’s not a problem for me, honestly.’’

‘’I don’t want you falling asleep on the wheel, son. You rest enough, stop for hotels to sleep, make enough food and bathroom runs to stretch your legs, and let Derek handle the wheel for at least short periods of times. If nothing else, I’ll come meet you halfway and I can drive the rest of the miles back.’’

‘’Thanks dad,’’ Stiles says fondly, ‘’It’s not necessary though. You’re more vital for us while you’re occupying your office. Keeping the base protected and all that.’’ He checks the mirror and his blind spot, before he changes lanes. ‘’I’ll let you know when we stop for the night and where. And let  _ me  _ know if anyone calls your office line, okay? So I’ll be up to date with things.’’

‘’Yeah, alright. Love you, kid. Stay safe, okay? And call me if you need help. Or if it’s something you can’t call  _ me  _ for, at least call  _ someone _ . Capiche?’’

‘’Roger that,’’ he agrees readily. ‘’Love you too, dad. And don’t forget to eat some of the brussel sprouts I know you’ve been avoiding! Just yesterday I was notified that my father’s dietary needs aren’t being met, because  _ someone  _ keeps leaving them on the side of the plate. We’ve agreed on read meat only if you eat your greens too. That was the deal.’’

‘’Oh, shoot, kid, I think the line’s getting a little wobbly. Gotta go, drive safe!’’

‘’Dad!’’ Stiles argues, laughing, as the call cuts short. ‘’Unbelievable,’’ he says, shaking his head. John lifted up his somber mood though, offering to be the unyielding rock Stiles needs, so he can continue their trip down with his heart at ease that his backup is trustworthy and efficient. Derek too, settles down after a moment, clearly sensing the chipper mood that has taken over the anger. Curiously, the wolf still hasn’t woken up, and Stiles hopes it stays that way for awhile longer. Derek needs it. 

He tucks the quilt up just a little where it has fallen from the front to reveal the sweater from underneath, covering him back up. With a deep sigh, Derek sinks further into the seat, and further into Stiles’ oblivious heart.

  
  
  


And hour or so later, Stiles groans, pulling to the side of the road as red and blue lights flash at him to stop. He’s been anticipating and waiting for it, but he didn’t think they’d stop him after so much time has passed by the initial contact. 

One white male officer exits the car, while the other stays stationed. They’re on the side of a busy highway, with cars whipping by fast. He takes everything the police will ask of him ready on his lap. The snow had stopped almost immediately after they crossed to Pennsylvania, and turned into rain.  Stiles checks the mirror as he rolls the window down, and sees the concealed weapon the officer is sporting on his person. His facial expression is wary, but there’s something in it, something at odds with the carefully constructed calm blankness Stiles can’t identify from afar.

‘’Registration and driver’s license,’’ the man says as he reaches Stiles car. 

Obligin, Stiles hands them out immediately. The officer,  _ Williams _ , his name tag reads, goes through the information on the slips with a flip of his hand, doing a quick courtesy of it. His eyes flick towards Derek, whom Stiles has tucked even tighter into the quilt, hoping the bulging around his neck isn’t too obvious.

‘’And your friend?’’ Williams says after a moment, leaning against the side of the Jeep. ‘’He looks to be in a rather bad shape. What’s his name? He got any ID on him?’’

‘’Uh, no. His name is Derek Hale,’’ Stiles answers, knowing he can’t blurt out the Miguel in this situation. They need to be as truthful as they can be, in case any of this gets written on any official papers. Williams’ mouth  twitches at the wolf’s name.

‘’And where is Mr. Hale from? Social security number?’’

Frowning, Stiles shrugs. ‘’I don’t know. I know his family lived in California, but I don’t know if that’s where he was born, sir.’’ Something cold and sick starts gathering at the pit of his stomach. Something’s wrong.

The officer makes an affirmative sound. ‘’What happened to his face?’’

Stiles tries to think furiously for an answer that isn’t straining too far from the truth, but still being vague enough that it doesn’t disclose the supernatural aspect of things. He says slowly, ‘’He had a fight with his partner of two years. I think he tried breaking up with them and leaving, but his partner didn’t allow it, so he beat him up for it. I found him from a subway station by accident, and took him home since he refused to go to the hospital. How he escaped, when and from where, I don’t know. He passed out pretty quickly and just asked me to drive him back to his hometown.’’

Williams stares at him for awhile, gauging his sincerity. ‘’And you accepted to drive him all the way to California right that second, dropping everything? Just taking off in an old Jeep to cross the country for two-three days?’’

‘’Yes,’’ Stiles answers firmly. ‘’Look, if you want to confirm my story, just call the Sheriff of Beacon Hills. He’s Derek’s family friend. They’re expecting him in case Derek’s nutcase partner decides to follow us and force him back. The sheriff can verify everything.’’

There’s another pause where the officer just stares at Stiles, and then glances at Derek’s face. He seems to come to his conclusions pretty fast. The man nods. ‘’Alright, Mr. Stilinski. Let me go to my car and check this information. Don’t leave.’’

Stiles looks at the man’s retreating back, gnawing at his lip. Something didn’t sit right with that interaction. They didn’t even insist to wake Derek up to confirm his name or to get his social security number. He rolls the window quickly up and flicks on the inconspicuous video camera he’d installed at the back of his trunk after too many mishaps with trickster fairies, and tries to see what the man will do.

The second Williams opens the door and sits down, Stiles sees his lips moving as he says to his partner  _ ‘It’s him _ ’. Both men start grinning furiously. 

It’s like a dam bursts. Adrenaline floods his system, boiling through his veins.  _ Hunters _ . Both cops must be members of some of the local hunter’s guilds that are after Derek. He doesn’t do a conscious decision, but when the other white partner of Williams’ takes out a rifle from the back, much to his growing horror, he presses down on the gas and  _ floors it. _

He gets honks for his troubles, a couple middle fingers, but he ignores them. He keeps furiously pressing down the pedal, only lifting his foot as he changes gears. Panic, intense and all consuming swells in his chest, and he flicks his eyes to his rearview mirror to see their followers. He’s going past the limit, jigsawing from lane to lane in order to get away as fast and efficiently as he can. The men have his ID and his registration information, but that doesn’t bother him. He’ll get them back sooner or later. 

Much to his relief though, the police cruiser doesn’t start its pursue. Stiles is free to blend into the traffic and disappear. Though he won’t be invisible. Now the hunters will know which dot to follow, what kind of vehicle they’re driving, and their destination. He’d like to think that Williams and his partner wouldn’t have hurt either of them in their uniforms, but his past run-ins on their kind, and what he’s heard of the hunters in enforcement jobs, they won’t even hesitate to spill blood onto their work clothes.

Stiles has been driving like a bat out of hell for fifteen minutes when Derek starts twitching in his sleep. Stiles is sweaty with dread and anxiety, his hands trembling from the images of either officer blasting the rifle inside the car and shooting Derek in the head, or maybe even forcing Derek out of the car before dumping him in the back of the cruiser and taking him back to where he’d just escaped from. That’s what was wrong with Williams’ expression. There was the kind of bloodlust of the hunt glinting in his eyes, the excitement of running down a rabid wolf and take the glory, the honor of the kill. Animals kill for the necessity of the food, for survival.

It’s entirely human to be excited about murdering someone in cold blood, just for who they are.

‘’Shit,’’ he mutters, when Derek makes a low sound at the back of his throat, his breath hitching. 

Wiping the sweat off his face, Stiles makes sure there’s nobody in his line of vision, nobody in the near vicinity he might crash on accident, before he thrusts his forearm underneath Derek’s nose.

At the same time he tries quelling his fear, taking exaggerated breaths to steady his heart. Just an inch, he rolls the window down, to air out the worst of his stench. 

Derek moans, low and panicked, his trapped limbs inside the quilt jerking and spasming. 

‘’Come on,’’ Stiles mutters, his other hand gripping the wheel as he gently pushes his arm right against Derek’s nostrils. It cuts the air supply from his nose, forcing the wolf to open his mouth in order to breathe. He cajoles a little hysterically, ‘’Derek, hey, buddy. You gotta wake up, man. We’re literally in a tiny metal box going 75 miles per hour*, I  _ really  _ do not want to get mauled and accidentally crash us against that huge truck of timber. I know you smell the fear and the adrenaline, but we’re safe, dude. We’re okay. Just, please, wake up.’’

Derek trashes, whining, eyes squeezing shut. He’s breathing through his mouth now, so Stiles lowers his arm just an inch, his muscles already quivering with strain. ‘’Shh. You’re okay. C’mon. Wake up, Derek. I know you can do it. Literally anything is better than what you’re probably seeing right now, and if you open your eyes, you’ll see that the reality isn’t as bad as you’re scenting it to be. Shh, it’s okay. Everything’s cool, I’ve got tasty fast food and stale Coca Cola and the frankly boring top 50 pop songs you were giving the eyebrows of doom for. Come on, please wake up for me.’’

He eases a little on the pedal, checking to see if someone’s on his blind spot, before changing lanes with one hand. ‘’Count your fingers Derek,’’ he grits, as Derek jerks the quilt again, this time with more force. He hopes his voice is reaching the wolf in his dreams. ‘’You need to have ten fingers. Ten fingers, or you’re dreaming. Come on. Count them and wake up. Please.’’

There’s a loud whine that ends a little gurgled as Derek presses himself tightly against the seat, before he trashes himself awake, shooting up so fast that it startles Stiles too. The wolf doesn’t see anything in his panic, but he feels the arm in front of his face, which he takes as a threat, and he savagely  _ bites _ .

‘’Son of a --!! ‘’ Stiles gives a little strangled scream as Derek’s teeth burrow into the skin of his forearm, the sharp canines drawing blood as they tear viciously into the muscle. His arm spasms on the first contact of the searing pain, but he doesn’t attempt to rip it away. 

‘’You’re okay, Derek. You’re safe. I’m Stiles, and you’re Derek, and we’re in my -- Hhnng --  _ Car _ , we’re in my car,  _ Jesus _ , trying to get to California. Shit, we’re safe. You’ve been sleeping for awhile, and I’ve been on the lookout. I protected us. There’s nobody following us. You’re Derek, okay? You’re Derek, and I’m Stiles. Shh, this is my Je -- Fuck!  _ Jeep _ , you’ve been in this Jeep a dozen times before. Whatever you saw just now wasn’t real. It isn’t real. Can you --  _ Hnng _ ,  _ fuck _ , please let go of my arm?’’

The quilt that had trapped Derek’s limbs now falls down to his lap from his shoulders, freeing his arms. Derek’s free hands come to grip both ends of Stiles’ arm, his eyes blazing blue. They seem hazy, like he’s still not there one hundred percent, but he does let go, albeit slowly. He’s breathing harsh, ragged breaths, and really, Stiles’ own breathing isn’t all that stellar right now either. His arm is burning, agony pulsing through it with every inch that frees from Derek’s teeth. 

‘’Okay?’’ he pants, wide gaze flicking back and forth with traffic and Derek’s confused and panicked expression. The wolf’s mouth stays open, blood dripping from his canines and lips, droplets falling onto the orange quilt, the fabric absorbing them. There are no claws though, almost like Derek didn’t have the energy to shift to his beta form. Or then the wolfsbane hinders his ability to do so, and Stiles should be glad that he only got to taste the pain of Derek’s human teeth, and not the brutal strength of his wolf mouth.

‘’Derek?’’ he asks again. He can hear his own voice shaking with strain. The wolf shakes his head gently, eyes squeezing back shut before he reopens them. He lets go of Stiles’ arm like burned once he realizes the damage.

‘’I hurt you,’’ Derek rasps, backing away as much as he can in the tiny space. He’s sweating, the sheen of it clear on Derek’s forehead, his whole frame shaking and quivering with the aftermath of the terror.  Stiles slowly pulls his arm towards his own chest, every jostle of it feeling like it’s tearing his bones. 

‘’You didn’t mean to,’’ he says in response, firmly believing that. ‘’You were dreaming, and in a bad place, and I tried helping in a way that wasn’t exactly the smartest. I thought that scenting my skin, my basic scent would help you block away the fear and anxiety I knew you’d smelled before, and I knew it contributed in your nightmares.’’

‘’You shouldn’t have -- I hurt you,’’ the wolf repeats blankly. Stiles sighs in frustration, pained tears pricking at his eyes.

‘’I know. And I  _ forgive  _ you for that. I’m not exactly unfamiliar with the term PTSD, or the ways it will present itself. You’re barely out of the warzone you just saved yourself from, and your brain isn’t exactly caught up yet. You’ll feel constantly threatened for a long time, even after you start healing, and waking up from those kinds of nightmares will always be difficult for you. For  _ anyone  _ in your shoes. I didn’t want to force you to awareness, but I figured that if you wanted to maul something to fend off those nightmare torturers, then my arm was better than my whole body or the car.’’

He tries opening and closing his fingers. It’s difficult, and hurts like a motherfucker. He grits his teeth against the pain. ‘’Now, count your fingers, make your brain understand that this is 100 % the present, wakeful world, and then try drinking and eating that burger over there.’’

‘’Shouldn’t we try bandaging your arm, first?’’ Derek asks quietly, his eyes eerily trained on the drip drops of blood steadily flowing out. He looks guilty, and sick, and really, really small and terrified. There are dark bags underneath his eyes, a crease from the window on his cheek, his hair mussed in every direction with his nightmare induced fear sweat. 

Shaking his head, Stiles’ voice cracks with tremors as he says, ‘’I’d need to stop to do that, and we had a little run-in with some hunters some twenty five minutes ago. I don’t think we’re out in the clear yet. ‘S why I’m driving so fast.’’

Derek tenses immediately at the mention of hunters, looking wildly around. ‘’Where?’’

Snorting, Stiles shakes his head before he winces at the flaring throb. ‘’Not -- Not anymore. They’re not here. I -- Jeez, I got you a chicken burger since I remembered that you liked all that sort of healthy food before, and the employee kind of thought I was kidnapping your ass, so he decided to call the cops. Though the cops were, unfortunately, not exactly supernatural friendly, so I busted us out of there. They didn’t start following us in their cruiser, so I’m figuring we’ll be getting tailers at some point. So we can’t stop yet.’’

Staring at the perfectly shaped teeth marks on Stiles’ arm, Derek freezes for a moment, before he wipes his mouth from the read that sports all around it, and turns in his seat, reaching to the back. He takes out the medical bag he knew to be there, since he’s used it before, to patch up either Stiles or Lydia. He seems a little surprised that it’s still there, and that Stiles has kept it fully supplied.

‘’Can you drive for a while with just one arm?’’ Derek asks, zipping open the bag. 

‘’Yeah,’’ Stiles sighs, resigned to his fate. He offers the injured arm back towards the wolf, and this time Derek takes it gently, testing the scale of pain and tearing.

‘’This will hurt,’’ Derek warns. 

Stiles steels himself for the sting of the disinfection medicine. He tries not to look, since he knows he’ll still feel a little faint about blood. Curiously, his phobia against it doesn’t carry over to situations where he thinks the blood is either warranted or even welcomed. 

The first wipe is alright, Derek doing his best to be as gentle as he can, but as he tries supporting the arm so Stiles doesn’t have to keep his muscles working, he pushes a little too hard against a tender spot. Stiles jerks the arm, gripping the wheel tightly with his other hand.  _ ‘’Fuck _ .’’

‘’I don’t think I crushed the bone,’’ Derek says quietly, grimacing as the movement gushes more blood out of the injury. 

Gritting his teeth together, Stiles nods, stilling his arm. ‘’That’s good,’’ he says. He grins, attempting to add a little humor, ‘’ ‘Tis but a flesh wound.’’

Derek shakes his head, wiping away the spilled fluids. He expertly wraps the arm in bandages, managing to put the compressive weight on the right spot. Testing it, Derek tries sliding it off, and lifting the fabric, but it stays. Satisfied, he drains the little of the pain he can, before Stiles catches him doing it.

‘’Hey, no. Stop that,’’ he says, easing his limb away. ‘’You’re in enough pain that you don’t need to take any of it from me, dude. I can handle a little discomfort.’’

Sighing a little, he tries the range of movement, and finds that it’s not as stiff as it could be. Derek is surprisingly good at first aid. Touching the gear stick hurts, sending twinges of pain shooting up his arm, radiating it a little to his spine. ‘’Is there any tylenol?’’

Ransacking through the bag, Derek pulls out a sheet of pills.

‘’Yeah,’’ Stiles nods. ‘’Can you give me two and put them in my mouth? And then give me a sip of that watered coke?’’

Derek obliges, careful not to touch anywhere tender, and helps him out. When he’s done, Stiles gives him a stern look and points towards the Burger King bag on their middle.

‘’Now, you need to eat to build some more energy. The fries might be a little gross by now, but I’ll gladly eat them if you don’t want them.’’

Derek, of course, immediately zeroes in on the odd facts.‘’Why didn’t you wake me up when you went to get food?’’

‘’Uhh, because I went to drive through and you were literally there throughout the whole experience?’’ Stiles says a little incredulously. ‘’It’s why we got the cops after us.’’

‘’Oh,’’ Derek says, taking the bag and peeking inside. ‘’I stayed asleep the whole time?’’

‘’Uh, yeah?’’

Derek frowns, but doesn’t say anything more. Stiles furrows his own brows in response, but stays quiet. Derek eats, slowly and still taking tiny chunks with his fingers rather than just biting down. Every piece that the wolf swallows looks painful, and Stiles kind of regrets buying two colas. Even watered down, the soda must still bubble unpleasantly in the wolf’s sore throat.

They keep driving quietly, letting the radio fill in the silence. Derek doesn’t fall asleep again. Both of them are alert for any suspicious vans, aware that once the alarm has been sounded, they won’t stay alone for too long. It’s still comforting, the presence of another, Stiles thinks. Even in the face of life and death, Derek’s company makes him feel safe, and the smarting of his arm reminds him every once in awhile to be thankful that the wolf is still alive. 

And to keep it that way, he needs to get them back to Beacon Hills, and fast.

  
  
  
  


The tiny roadside motel they stop at is dingy at worst, and homey at best. Stiles buys a room for two with one bed while Derek parks the car. 

Once they get their bags upstairs, Derek doesn’t mention the lack of the other bed, but heads straight to the bathroom. Stiles flops down onto the soft mattress, mindful of his arm, and releases a deep, long breath that he’s been holding since he got taken by surprised by the cops. He allows himself five minutes of just laying there.

They’ve still got a long way to go. Stopping for the night might turn out to be dangerous if any of the locals get a whiff of their whereabouts. He’d instructed Derek to cover the Jeep with the same black sheet Stiles had shielded it to begin with, knowing it’ll give them a little more time to hide.

When he’s done wallowing, he asks Siri to call Danny.

‘’Hey-yo, Danny boy,’’ Stiles offers in a greeting when the man answers. ‘’You  busy?’’

‘’Busy eating, if that’s what you mean. But no. What’s up?’’

‘’Any news for our backup?’’

‘’Mm,’’ Danny answers. ‘’Four have reported for duty, still awaiting on seven people. That’s how many you wanted, right?’’

‘’Well, that was the bare minimum, yeah.’’

There’s a clink on the other side what Stiles imagines to be a fork, and then Danny says, ‘’Okay, so I can call in for more. You said you didn’t want us in the old Hale house, so we’ve decided to put camp deep into the preserve where no mundane will stumble upon us. The hunters might figure out the trap halfway there, but we have a couple alternative plans if the first three fail.’’

‘’Cool. Did you activate the router yet?’’

‘’A couple hours ago. There should be at least ten ghosts of you on their maps right now, so they’ll be off to a loose goose chase again. The amount will double and triple during the night when you sleep, and Derek’s chip should be entirely invisible. I’m trying to re-access their shared maps, but they changed their codes, so it’ll take me at least twenty minutes to crack them, since I’m feeling lazy.’’

Stiles snorts. ‘’As long as we can sleep the night peacefully, you can do whatever. We’re not gonna take the chip out of him yet, I think. It’ll be safer to do it while at my dad’s house, since we have no way to gauge the rate of Derek’s healing right now. We don’t want him to bleed to death just as we’re trying to save him.’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Danny agrees. ‘’Probably wise. Hey, is Derek there? Are you on speaker?’’

‘’Nah, he’s in the bathroom. But I can put you on speaker when he gets back?’’

‘’I just wanted to know his size in clothes so I can arrange for him a moderate wardrobe, since I don’t think he has any clothes right now?’’

‘’Oh, yeah, that’s actually a really good idea. He’s wearing my clothes at the moment, since the outfit I bought him got bloody. But uh, yeah, I can totally ask. Though I doubt he even knows his own size right now, since he’s lost quite a few pounds since the last time he went out and bought himself anything.’’

‘’Oh,’’ Danny says. ‘’Right. That’s true. You said he’s wearing your clothes right now? Are they fit? Or too small? Or baggy on him?’’

‘’Baggy,’’ Stiles sighs. ‘’The waist is fine, since his sweatpants have stayed on, but t-shirts, sweaters, everything else just droops off his shoulders. Shoe size is 11.’’

‘’How do you know his shoe size?’’ Danny asks, amused.

‘’Because I just  _ bought  _ him shoes,’’ Stiles says. ‘’On the topic of buying things, did you track down his Camaro?’’

‘’Oh yeah,’’ Danny confirms. ‘’It was found trashed and burned at some dingy town in Argentina. Close to where Cora’s pack was supposed to be. I’m sorry.’’

‘’Damn it,’’ Stiles swears quietly. ‘’We gotta get him a new ride then.’’

‘’You don’t need to get me a car,’’ Derek says suddenly, startling Stiles enough for him to shoot up from the bed. 

‘’Jesus,’’ Stiles pants, ‘’Warn a guy!’’

Derek raises an eyebrow. It makes Stiles roll his eyes before he drops back down to his back, only to find Danny snorting from the other side. He harrumphs. 

‘’Hi Derek,’’ Danny’s tinny voice greets from the speaker. ‘’How are you holding up?’’

‘’I’m fine,’’ Derek says, sitting down on the bed next to Stiles’ hip. He’s wearing a t-shirt and his sweats, his two thick sweaters lost somewhere along the way. Stiles traces the bruises along his arms, from the angry blisters on his wrists, up to his collared neck, to his purple-black jaw. 

‘’Still not healing,’’ Stiles mutters. ‘’Seriously. Is there like, wolfsbane in the collar too? Shouldn’t you have flushed any traces of the poison off your system by now?’’

Frowning, Derek looks down to his hands. He shrugs. ‘’I don’t know. I don’t smell any aconite on the collar, but my instincts and senses are a little haywire right now.’’

‘’Yeah, no doubt,’’ Danny agrees. ‘’If the reported amounts of poisonous things they’ve put in you are in any way accurate, I think the mistletoe and the extracted silver has done some pretty bad damage in your immune system, so the aconite just might linger longer than usual.’’

‘’I fucking hate rogue hunters,’’ Stiles growls darkly. ‘’Do you think we should try giving him any antidotes? I mean, like, the way we burn the wolfsbane and apply it to an infected bullet wound?’’

‘’Nah I don’t think it’s a good idea. At this point, I think adding anything more of any of the mistletoe or silver or whatever, might be the final straw that actually kills him,’’ Danny says. ‘’I’ll send some queries about the situation around, see if anyone knows any natural remedies to get the poisons off your system faster. Physical touch will also help too, that’s the first answer I know I’ll get.’’ There’s a scraping sound, like he’s just finished his meal. ‘’Sorry I can’t be of more help right now. If you guys need anything else, just let me know, okay? Me and couple guys are working an all nighter tonight, so catching me in the morning is a little so-so, but you can always call Meredith. She’s in Fresno, just waiting for the O.K sign to get into action, so if any problems arise, she’s the first who’ll be close enough to come for your aid.’’

‘’Thanks dude,’’ Stiles says, grasping for the phone. ‘’We’ll be fine for now, I think. Gotta catch some z’s so we can evade our hounds with a little more alert tomorrow.’’

‘’Try to get some sleep,’’ Danny says sincerely. ‘’I already got back your ID and license, just fyi, I dropped them in your mail slot. Night, you guys.’’

‘’Ohh, thank you! You are  _ the man _ , Danny-boy. Is there anything you won’t accomplish?’’

The admission makes Danny sigh, long and wistful. ‘’I still haven’t gotten that date with Fernando, so.’’

‘’Awww. You’ll catch him yet. With those dimples, he’ll be swooned in no time.’’ Stiles nudges at Derek gently.  ‘’C’mon, Derek. Tell the guy he’ll get the man of his dreams.’’

‘’You’ll get him Danny,’’ Derek says, deadpan. Danny laughs, and bids them good night.

After cutting the call, Stiles looks up at the wolf. ‘’You hungry?’’ 

Derek shakes his head.

‘’Me neither,’’ Stiles says. ‘’Wanna go to sleep?’’

Derek looks around a little uncomfortably. He opens his mouth a couple times, only to shut it without saying anything. Stiles waits patiently, tenderly caressing his injured arm, to soothe the pains of it.

‘’I can’t shift into my wolf form,’’ Derek admits finally, his voice quiet. Stiles blinks at the admission. 

‘’Why do you need to shift?’’ Stiles asks calmly, even if the insides of him are starting to bubble with rage again. A born wolf unable to shift into either their beta form or their wolf fur? Stiles is going to  _ end  _ every single one of the hunters who participated in the cruelty and torture. He’ll beat them to a pulp and tell them exactly why they’re getting the end they are. He’s just going to have to omit some of the truth he’s going to tell his dad after all of this is over.

‘’I -- ‘’ Derek starts, but clams up. His brows furrow in agitation. ‘’I thought that’s why you got only one bed? So that I’ll sleep on the floor?’’

‘’Oh my god,  _ what _ !?’’ Stiles asks in alarm. He shoots up to a sitting position again, wincing at the strain it puts on his arm, before he turns to the wolf with wide, slightly confused eyes. ‘’Why the fuck would I make you sleep on the floor?  _ No _ ,’’ he emphasizes the word sternly, ‘’You are not sleeping on the floor, wolf fur or no. Jesus. You’ve literally withstood two years of torture and you think I’d force you to -- No, you know what, I’m actually a little hurt now. There’s like, nothing to cushion your broken bones and bruised skin, I think this  _ soft bed _ is a little too hard for you right now. Even I’m not that big of an asshole that I’d buy a room for two just to tell you that you’re not allowed on the bed.’’

He takes off the bed, starts pacing around the room. ‘’I can’t believe you’d think -- But of course you would. It’s not like anyone’s ever -- Jesus fucking christ --’’ He rubs his hand over his face.

‘’I thought that having one bed where we would sleep together would be better, since physical reassurance is something you need right now to boost up your healing, and because I’ve always thought sleeping near the pack is calming and makes me feel safe. But if you don’t want that, if you don’t want to share a bed with me, then that’s okay. You can take this bed and I’ll go down to the lobby to get myself a spare bed here, the kind of portable one. I just tried to make it easier for you to get the physical aspect of things for the night without having to ask.’’

Derek just stares at him for a long moment, before giving a slow nod. ‘’I don’t mind -- Sharing,’’ he says haltingly. 

Stiles sighs, relieved. ‘’I -- That’s, good. Thank you. I don’t mind sharing either.’’ Then he frowns, a tiny little detail sparking at the back of his mind. ‘’Oh, god, oh uh, I’m also sorry for doing this without asking. Shit. I should’ve gotten your consent first. No wonder you were confused. Crap, I’m doing this all wrong.’’

‘’You’re doing fine, Stiles,’’ Derek says calmly. Stiles thinks a little hysterically that,  _ no _ , he’s actually  _ not  _ doing fine. He almost coerced, or at least manipulated Derek to share a bed with him. He’s not firing on all cylinders right now, but that,  _ that  _ is something he should have very well thought before cashing out the room arrangements.

Stiles stops, turns to face the wolf. He looks beyond tired, something Stiles acutely feels. ‘’So, uh, sleep?’’ he asks. He’s glad Derek had taken his place as the driver after two hours of Stiles driving one handed. If he hadn’t, Stiles thinks he might be dead on his feet right now. The tylenol helped some, but the injury still aches a lot with every movement. He refuses to even think of all the injuries Derek has had, or is currently sporting. He’s afraid to even offer Derek any pills, not knowing how he would react to them in his current state, considering he’s never had any kind of medicine.

‘’Yeah,’’ Derek agrees. ‘’Sleeping sounds. Good.’’

‘’Good, good,’’ Stiles nods, and points his thumb over his shoulder, towards the bathroom. ‘’I’ll wash my teeth and change my clothes. I packed you a spare nightshirt and boxers. Uh, the underwear is new and I haven’t worn it, ever, so I hope they fit.’’

He makes a hasty exit, berating himself as he does so. He’s gonna have to text Danny to go buy the most luxurious, most softest mattress he can find and ship it to the Stilinski house. Then he’s gonna offer it to Derek, tell him he can decide who sleeps in it, it being 100% okay if nobody else is allowed on it but Derek. An apology of sorts.

He takes his time. A hot shower feels good against his tense shoulders, softening the muscle tissue pleasantly. He’s wrapped a plastic bag he found from the cabinets over his bandages. He frowns at it. He’ll have to dig out the first aid bag to redo his bandages and apply more medicine in it. He won’t need the compress anymore though, so some of the weight will literally be lifted off of his arms.

He steps out, some thirty minutes later, clad only in a towel and fresh bandages for his injury. Derek has already migrated under the covers, his eyes only half mast. Stiles offers a half smile, quietly changing into his boxers and t-shirt, before flicking the lights off and crawling underneath the covers with the wolf. 

Derek’s form is loose and warm, his breathing even and slow. Stiles shifts close, turning onto his side.

‘’Dude,’’ he whispers, and gets an affirmative grunt in response. ‘’Do you mind if we spoon?’’

There’s a small pause, before Derek shakes his head a little. 

‘’Was that a ‘ _ No I don’t mind’  _ or ‘ _ No, I don’t want to spoon _ ’?’’ he checks . 

‘’No, I don’t mind,’’ Derek rasps tiredly.

‘’Awesome,’’ Stiles breathes, and plasters himself against the wolf’s back. ‘’Just tell me if I’m hurting you, okay?’’ He gets another grunt.

‘’Good. And, uh, sorry if I wake you up. I tend to either speak in my sleep, or then flail around a little. Though I took some stronger painkillers which are supposed to dull the pain to bearable level for me, so I think it’ll make me pliant enough that I won’t move that much while I dream.’’

He gets comfortable, adjusting his position before wrapping his injured arm carefully around Derek’s body. The wolf shifts too, backing up just a little further into Stiles’ embrace. His heart flutters at act, and he tightens his hold just a fraction more. Then he settles his head on the pillow, right behind Derek’s collared neck. The metal wrapped around the man’s throat still looks extremely uncomfortable, and Stiles feels bad for him. He hopes the touch of their skin will soothe some of Derek’s discomfort, even if it apates it just a little. 

Though the way the wolf has already dropped into slumber, his breathing evening out even more, Stiles thinks the collar doesn’t bother Derek as much as it does Stiles, at least not anymore. He’s probably worn it for the past year at least, so the pain of the spikes doesn’t even register anymore.

With these thoughts, Stiles falls asleep feeling mixed of physical warmth and the cold of his thoughts, his heart following the steady beat of Derek’s into slumber, their rhythms syncing, night sweeping them into the abyss.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I should give a warning for this chapter, but I wouldn’t know what that would be. Just know that Derek’s life gets a a lot more horrible before he gets all the good things.  
> I also upped the chapter count because apparently I suck at this estimation thing, pfft.  
> I’m so thankful for all of your support and comments, I hope you guys know that. I want to hug every single one of you!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this chapter, and please, _if you haven’t read the tags so far, heed them now._ The last bit might be a little too gory for some.
> 
> Not beta read.

Stiles wakes up gradually, slowly surfacing into awareness. There’s a small stream of sunlight peeking from the cracked curtains, dust particles dancing in the bright beam. He blinks, eyes crusty, before taking a sleepy, deep breath which turns into a huge yawn.

Derek has migrated during the night, the wolf’s face nudged against Stiles’ pectoral, his breathing warm and moist, if a little thready. The man’s hand has found its way underneath Stiles’ t-shirt, palm warm against the flat of Stiles’ stomach. Their legs are intertwined, and Stiles’ arm is still somehow wrapped around the fragile frame of Derek’s. It throbs unpleasantly, reminding him of the existence of his injury.

He looks down to Derek’s sleeping face, and sees that not a single one of the bruises have faded. The scruff on the wolf’s face hides the extent of his injuries to some degree, but there’s no mistaking the purple and black bruising along the column of his neck, or the welts and blisters decorating his skin.

Stiles _really_ doesn’t want to start his day with anger, but he honestly can’t help it. It bubbles up, flooding his system with it. It brings him to full consciousness with a whump.

The clock on his phone blinks 8:38 AM when he grabs it. He’d ordered breakfast into their room for 8:45, which has him carefully scrambling up from the bed to gather his clothes, trying his damndest not to wake Derek up by startling him out of his slumber. The response to that might be a lot more violent this time, he thinks.

He’s glad he put all of their spare clothes in easy reach, so he doesn’t have to start digging into his bags.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t even take full five minutes before Derek notices the absence of his bedmate, and starts restlessly grasping for the comfort of another body. Stiles sighs, plopping himself onto the bed, sitting just so that Derek’s fumbling hands reach his waist. The wolf drags himself closer, snuggling against Stiles’ side in his slumber.

Tapping on his phone, he finds an app he thinks might be useful. It won’t take long now, before they’ll get a knock on the door for room service, and he wants Derek awake before a stranger will intrude into their makeshift den. The device chirps as he sets the timer, and within twenty seconds, it starts to gradually play a soft tune, volume increasing little by little.

Derek snuffles with the first gentle sways of a flute, a gentle bubbling of a river and its birds joining as a background choir, and starts twitching gently when the decibels rise. His brows furrow, the tight embrace he’s locked Stiles’ waist in turning even tighter. Stiles doesn’t dare reciprocate the touch, unsure whether it would be welcome or not. He allows Derek to pull him closer as he fights himself awake, the act seeming almost reluctant.

And yeah, Stiles understands. Sleep was probably Derek’s only solace in the horrid circumstances he lived in.

When Derek’s eyelids start fluttering, Stiles decides to gently push him into awareness. ‘’Hey big guy. Good morning.’’

There’s a low sound from the pit of the man’s throat, before Derek’s eyes squint open. He blinks several times, looking faintly taken aback at the rather gentle wake-up call. Stiles grins down at him. ‘’Room service is gonna be up in, well, they were supposed to be here already, but I digress, we both need to be a little more presentable to receive our breakfast before we hit the road.’’

Derek rubs his eyes, but gets up. The process is as sluggish and painful looking as it was when he tried climbing into the car, and Stiles winces in sympathy. His own arm is giving him grief enough, and seeing the blood spots Derek’s t-shirt is sporting, he decides to ask Danny about giving Derek some painkillers. There’s only so much suffering one man should endure, and Derek has passed that limit an eon ago.

There’s a knock on their door just as Derek has shut the bathroom door behind him. Stiles gets up, walking up to the peephole. ‘’Who is it?’’ he asks, cautious.

‘’Room service, sir. Your breakfast order.’’

‘’Cool,’’ Stiles responds, and opens the locks before peeking tentatively from behind the cracked door. ‘’Did you get us the cranberry porridge with maple syrup?’’

The server blinks in confusion. She pulls out the receipt, a little flustered. ‘’Um, I don’t -- There was no cranberry porridge on the list. I’m so sorry, sir, it’ll take some time to prepare it, but I can go --’’

‘’Nah,’’ Stiles says, pushing the door fully open. ‘’I think I just forgot to mention it. We’ll be happy with the other things. Thank you so much for your service, miss.’’ She offers her a twenty dollar bill as a tip and corrals the cart inside the room with their food. The woman curtsies before returning to her other tasks, her feet making a fast paced ‘ _tap tap tap_ ’ on the empty hallway.

When he’s put the locks back in place, he sees Derek standing in the bathroom the door jamb, looking at him with lifted eyebrows. Stiles shrugs.

‘’Had to confirm whether or not she was an actual employee. If they had been a hunter, they would’ve just agreed with what I asked, since that would’ve made me open the door for them, and give them access to an immediate attack. Especially since we were waiting for room service, had anyone suspicious known about it, they would’ve used it, as we were vulnerable and had an easy opening.’’

Nodding, Derek comes to sit on the bed, his gaze eyeing hungrily at the cart. The smell is absolutely divine.

Stiles claps his hands together. ‘’Right! So I ordered pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, toast, and fruits, as well as tea and coffee. Oh, and a smoothie for you. You liked those before, right? And it’s probably easy to swallow too, with your,’’ he gestures towards Derek’s neck, ‘’Condition. Or whatever. Anyway, I got you something called _pineapple island_ , which I think has pineapple and mango in it. And some other ingredient I forgot the name of. They asked if you wanted it in either natural or vanilla yogurt, and I thought about saying natural, but then I thought that you need more sugar than that, so I got it made with vanilla. That cool?’’

Derek hums in agreement, grabbing the plastic cup where the yellow drink has been poured in. Then he piles some scrambled eggs and bacon and salad on a plate before situating himself up the bed, leaning against the headboard.

Stiles grins in satisfaction, following the wolf suit. They probably don’t have much time until they have to get a move on, their cover deliberately shaky at best. The chip chase has most likely kept the hunters occupied the whole night, which gives them some advantage. Stiles feels his chest fill with smug glee at the thought of it, the exhaustion and frustration the others have to be feeling as their target has evaded them time and time again, making him happy. Their system of putting the microchips underneath their victims skin must’ve been fool proof so far, and now that it’s failing spectacularly, the hunters must be fuming with barely contained anger.

Ahh, Stiles sighs, soon he’ll get eradicate some of the assailants, see with his own eyes the anger turn into fear, watch as the hateful commentary of abominations changes into pleads and begs for mercy.

Mercy that he has no plans on offering.

  
  
  


After both of them have changed clothes and gotten some fresh first aid given to their injuries, they hit the road. Stiles finds that he has no problems driving as long as Derek changes the gears when he asks. The tylenol helps with the radiating pains and curbs them down a little. Danny had given the A-OK for Derek to take some medicine too, since the wolf seems to be healing at a human pace, if not even slower.

As much as Derek had wanted to eat some of the bacon, he gave up after the second piece, admitting defeat by offering the rest of it to Stiles. The smoothie he’d downed with little to no difficulties, and after he realized the scrambled eggs were soft enough for even him to swallow, Stiles had practically dumped all of it on the wolf’s plate.

If one wants to get better, one has to eat. That’s what his mother always told him when she forced herself to eat in her weakened state, even if she kept retching it all back up.

The first couple hours are uneventful. Stiles doesn’t see anybody that would fit the description of a hunter, and they shop with ease at a gas station, stopping by the pharmacy to stock up both painkillers and their first aid bag, but also Stiles’ adderall. His emergency stash he keeps hidden in different places isn’t containing too many pills, and if he has a chance to not use the tiny batch, he’d rather not spend it recklessly.

Stiles munches on a red vine as he drives. Derek’s hogged his phone for the moment, scrolling down god knows what in there. Stiles isn’t bothered by it, which is a first. He usually guards the device with his life, all of the information tucked inside sensitive and dangerous if it got into wrong hands.

Derek’s hands, however, are safe. He’s also pretty sure he’d exited all of the porn sites before Derek woke up in his apartment, saving him from some embarrassment as the wolf won’t be stumbling upon them. And he doesn’t have browser history much, his tendency to use incognito to avoid leaving a trail behind very much installed into his core.

After a third time when Derek sees something he doesn’t like, making a small sound of displeasure, Stiles decides to veer his concentration to something else.

‘’So hey,’’ he says, swallowing the candy. ‘’Where are all your stuff?’’

Derek’s head rises slowly up, one of his brows quirking up.

Stiles makes a face. ‘’Oh, shut up,’’ he says, ‘’You know I don’t mean the stuff you had in the Camaro. Those are obviously burned off of this plane of existence. I meant, like, do you still have properties in Beacon Hills? A vault with a new ID and clothes and possibly credit cards? I know how paranoid you are, you and Peter both. There’s no way you don’t have any backup plans up your sleeve.’’

There’s a moment of silence where Stiles thinks Derek is thinking things through, before the wolf responds in a quiet rasp, ‘’I don't have any backup ID’s or credit cards. I needed my passport and cards when I traveled, and used up all my cash after I lost my car.’’

‘’Damn it,’’ Stiles sighs. ‘’And any properties? I know the town demolished your old house in the preserve, but the loft and the warehouse?’’

Derek takes a breath, releasing it slowly. ‘’The warehouse should be fine, I think. The last rave you had in my loft, on the other hand, left behind an extensive water damage. They had to either destroy the building and start anew, or then use millions of dollars in restoration, which would’ve taken longer than the demolishing and rebuilding, so I had it taken down.’’

Stiles cringes. He actually remembers it well. Or, not that well, he’d been beyond plastered at the time, but the next morning had Peter on a warpath as someone had broken in onto multiple apartments on the property, plugging bathtubs and leaving the water running. As a ‘funny’ prank. It had been an outsider, someone unfamiliar to the pack. The party had kind of gotten out of hand after Liam and Mason had called in their classmates, who in turn had invited their friends, and them their friends, and suddenly the loft had been filled with so many people that his father had been called to break things off.

‘’God, I’m so sorry about that. Lydia had thought the loft the perfect place, since the last time we had a party there it had gone really well. We didn’t even think that any of the pack members would call in outsiders, since it was supposed to be a private graduation celebration thing.’’

Derek shrugs amiably. ‘’I never started the new plans, so the property is still probably empty. Since it had been Peter’s home too, I bought him a house to compensate. Or, gave him money for a house. I don’t exactly know where he ended up settling.’’

Stiles taps at the steering wheel. ‘’That’s why he suddenly just up and disappeared. I hadn’t even realized you had to take the whole building down. Scott never mentioned it, though not that I asked. I figured the damage wasn’t that bad since none of us were billed and you didn’t call us to threaten us with murder. But then again, Peter pretty much covered that part. Fuck. You should’ve said something. We would’ve tried to pay at least partly. The loss of income from the tenants must’ve been a blow big enough, but to have to demolish the entire thing?’’ Stiles whistles. ‘’That must’ve made a huge notch in your bank account.’’

‘’I didn’t want any of you to start your college years with thousands of dollars of debt on top of the student loan I know most of you had to take.  I had money and I wasn’t living in there at the moment, so I was in no rush to do much anything about it,’’ Derek admits quietly.

Stiles swears in frustration. ‘’Damn it, Derek, this is why people keep using you. You never demand repercussions or consequences from other people’s actions. You never asked for an apology from Scott, or Isaac, or hell, even _me_ ! There’s a _limit_ to a person’s goodwill, and you’ve reached yours. In fact, you’ve crossed the line multiple times without asking for anything in return. Are you just gonna keep giving until there’s _nothing_ of you left?’’

Hurt flashes in Derek’s expression before he has time to bury it under the blank mask he used to wear so well, once. It makes Stiles feel immediately guilty.

‘’I did bash your head against the steering wheel once. I could do it again,’’ Derek says tonelessly, turning his head away to hide his face.

‘’That time it was warranted,’’ Stiles mutters. ‘’I paraded you around like a piece of meat, and that was unnecessary and unfair towards you. Especially because I did it without your consent.’’

Derek shrugs. It incenses Stiles even more. ‘’Don’t brush it off like that,’’ he says fiercely. ‘’I did something wrong that hurt you, and you’re entitled to feel sad and angry about it. In a long line of offenses, you’ve probably shouldered more than you’ve made. _Definitely_ shouldered more than you've made. Things have been shitty for you for a long time and you _should_ feel upset about them.’’

‘’If I got upset about every single tiny thing that has gone wrong in my life, then that would be all I would ever feel,’’ Derek says in reply. He won’t meet Stiles’ eyes.

Huffing, Stiles let’s go of the wheel for a spare few seconds to brush his hand through his hair. He takes a few minutes to gather his thoughts. He cannot truly grasp the extent of pain Derek has endured in his life. He doesn’t think he even could withstand as much as the wolf has and not go insane with grief. Even now, when Stiles is doing his best to help him out, he can clearly see the signs in Derek’s face, like he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Stiles to either turn on him or cast him away if the situation gets too difficult to handle. The awareness that he and Scott did that to Derek a lot in the past, rests heavily behind his ribcage. The truth of it hurts. But it is just that, and therapy and diving into psychological studies has helped him a lot to come in terms with his guilt.

And he really thinks Derek needs to have that kind of closure for himself. To finally let go of the past mistakes that weigh him down and instead grasp and embrace the good the man has brought to everyone’s lives.

‘’If you think it's too difficult right now, too painful to deal with on top of everything you’ve got going on, then that’s fine,’’ he says. He sees Derek turn his face at the non-sequitur, enough to see Stiles’ expression. The man’s brows quirk in confusion. ‘’It’s okay to not be ready to face your past. I get that, more than anything. But you should try -- Being gentle with yourself when you make mistakes. Be, like, compassionate and empathetic towards yourself. You see so much good and potential in others, despite their misgivings, so why not apply that to _you_?’’

‘’Stiles --’’ Derek starts, his voice a little thick, but he interrupts.

‘’No, don’t say- Look, listen just for a bit, okay? Just. Hear me out.’’

Derek purses his lips, hands balled into fists in his lap, but he stays quiet.

Stiles considers his next words very carefully. ‘’You’ve experienced a lot of anger and hate in your life, all of that directed towards you, of who you are. You’ve lost so much, beyond any comprehension, that you started to feel that hate towards yourself too, right? Because you think of yourself as the catalyst of bad things, that you have this curse laid on your shoulders that makes everyone around you sucked into that darkness with you, and get killed because of it, right?’’

There’s no response, but Stiles didn’t expect any. ‘’But that’s not true at all. How many times have you saved my life? My dad’s? Scott’s? Chris Argent’s? Hell, you gave up your Alpha powers just to save Cora, who had at that point done nothing but scorn you. You put yourself in the line of the fire to protect people who don’t necessarily warrant or deserve that kind of caring. You don’t do it out of obligation. You do it because you’re a good man. A kind man, someone who deserves to be taken care of, like you do to others. If you start forgiving yourself for old mistakes, that’s not you condoning your own bad behaviour. That’s about trying to heal, of, of, breaking old patterns and habits, and creating new, happy, healthy ones. You’re always trying to do what you think is best, but your past will weigh your opinions, and cloud your judgment.’’

He doesn’t dare look at Derek’s face, knowing just how hard the words will sting and burrow into his heart, but he does gentle his voice, ‘’If you start at a place of loving yourself, then the next step you take, whatever that is, will be the best you could have chosen. And that’s enough.’’

The words settle quietly, and Stiles doesn’t say anything after it. He sees Derek curling in on himself a little, hunching away. That’s okay. When his therapist had told him the same thing for the first time, Stiles had actually lashed out and left the appointment before it had a chance to properly even begin. The grain of truth that will settle though, is like a seed that will start growing slowly and surely, pushing out of the soil if someone keeps nurturing it.

And Stiles has every intention to do exactly that.

  
  
  


It’s when they pass the state lines to Indiana that they encounter their first wave of followers. It’s a little comical, Stiles thinks, how predictable most of them are. All three cars are black SUVs with tinted windows, and they bracket the Jeep as much as they can with only two lanes.

‘’Whelp,’’ Stiles says in amusement, ‘’Seems like our entourage has finally arrived.’’

Derek looks tensely around, his head bowed low. He seems to be listening in onto the conversations surrounding them, gauging the positions without exposing his bulging collar to the world.

‘’Hey Siri,’’ Stiles says, and the device blares to life in Derek’s hands. ‘’Call Danny.’’

‘’Calling Danny The Handsome, two hearts, two hearts,’’ Siri responds.

Stiles refuses to flush red at his contact names. He peeks at Derek before focusing back onto the road. ‘’Can you put it on speaker and then place it on the holder? Danny can be our guide away from these leeches.’’

Derek does as instructed, his hands shaking. Danny answers in two rings. ‘’ ‘lo?’’

‘’Hey, Danny,’’ Stiles greets him. ‘’You asleep still?’’

‘’ ‘s still early,’’ the man mumbles.

‘’Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. But I’ve got three little buggers boxing me in, and we’re in the middle of a busy highway with no way to escape, since I’m rather unfamiliar with the area. Could you trace my phone and give us some directions to anywhere we could lose these guys? I don’t think they’ll try anything while we’re up in speed with all these witnesses, but when we run out of gas at some point, any gas station will be fair game to these shitheads.’’

‘’Crap,’’ Danny says, clearly more awake now, and Stiles can hear him scramble out of bed. ‘’Hold on, let me trace your car to see your location.’’

Stiles nods in agreement, even if the man won’t see it, and then he freezes for a moment as the words sink in. Then he says with feeling, ‘’Dude! You’ve chipped my car?’’

Danny snorts. ‘’Of course. Knowing you, the second the big bad rolls into town, you’d be instantly separated with everyone else, and then you’d somehow lose your phone, your home keys, the watch I gave you.. But damn if that car isn’t somehow always attached to you. If I’m looking for you I always start with your Jeep. It’s foolproof.’’

‘’A lot of things make sense now,’’ Stiles grumbles. ‘’I haven’t even used Roscoe for over a year. Don’t tell me it’s bugged too?’’

‘’No,’’ Danny says. ‘’I don’t want to hear anything that goes on in that car. You’ve described enough of your sexcapedes that I’m not sure I even want to set a foot inside it.’’

Stiles blushes. ‘’Hey now,’’ he argues lamely, ‘’It was only three times, okay? And two of those were only makeouts. Roscoe deserves better than that.’’

‘’Yeah, yeah,’’ there’s a tinny creak that has Derek cock his head as he listens. ‘’So, okay. You’re in. . . Somewhere near Fremont. Okay, hang on, let me get a more detailed map.’’

 _‘’Stiles_ ,’’ Derek breathes suddenly, his head snapping up, eyes wide and fearful. ‘’They’ve got the remote control.’’

Furrowing his brows, Stiles asks in confusion, ‘’Remote control? For wh -- ‘’ He doesn’t even end his sentence before the realization dawns on him, his eyes flicking down to Derek’s neck.

_For the collar._

‘’Oh fuck,’’ Stiles chokes, turning his head just in time to look inside the SUV on the lane next to his Jeep, where a woman leers at them, wide and toothy, in victory. She has something grey in her hand, a rectangle that both of them instantly identify. She shakes it with a grin, taunting them.

‘’Danny!’’ Stiles panics, ‘’Get us out of here _right now._ They’ve got the fucking remote for --’’

Stiles watches in slow motion as she rotates the button to the max. Derek immediately goes ridgid, his upper body straining upwards against the seatbelt, eyes wide an unseeing, before he lets out an agonized scream. His body spasms, the blue lights of electricity visible where they crackle against the metal, before sinking into Derek’s flesh. Stiles can _smell_ the burning of Derek’s skin.

 _‘’Danny_!’’ Stiles shouts, fury and helplessness flooding him. ‘’Fucking now would be a perfect time!’’

There are slight tremors in Danny’s voice as he calmly says, ‘’Take the next exit out, it’s coming up in a couple hundred feet. Get up the ramp, but do it over the yellow lines and bumps, so that either none can follow you, or then you’ll only have one in your tail. Speed is your friend, try to gain distance. They haven’t used the controller until now, because they’ve been too far for it to connect.’’

‘’Fuck!’’ Stiles shouts, pressing on the gas. He sees the woman laughing, enjoying Derek’s torture. The volts don’t let up. Derek writhes and howls in awful agony, clawing at the collar on his neck, his eyes as blue as the electricity that they keep feeding into the system of the collar, and for a one horrible moment, Stiles thinks that Derek might actually die right here. He looks like he’s choking, blood trickling down both his nostrils, inhuman sounds crawling out of his throat as he seizes and seizes and seizes the more shocks the hunters keep feeding into his body. His veins are bulging from his arms and neck and forehead, desperate whines and gurgles filling the inside of the car.

Stiles has to wrench his own gaze away from the cruel torment they’re putting Derek through, and focuses intently into getting them out of there. He doesn’t dare bump into any of the SUV’s, but he knows a trick or two on how to scare them.

He sees the ramp approaching, and so do the hunters. Stiles pretends that he isn’t going to get up the line, and presses on the gas, jerking the steering wheel quickly to his left before righting the car. He ignores the flare of pain it sends throughout his arm, instead clenching his muscles to feel it, to keep his thoughts sharp. It does the trick, and the black car does a similar move in order to dodge. Stiles sends them a feral grin.

‘’Take this, you sick pieces of shit,’’ he says darkly, before doing the move again. The hunters move in sync, anticipating it this time. Just as he rights the car, he presses on the break, making the SUV that’s been sucked into his rear dodge to the next lane in order to avoid collusion.

‘’Bingo,’’ Stiles grits, before wrenching the wheels forcefully to the right, just barely avoiding the brick wall that separates the highway from the ramp, and continues up the road, watching as all three of the cars miss the exit and have to continue forward.

Stiles eases on the gas, seeing the red lights ordering him to stop, and as he rolls slowly to the proper lane, Derek’s spasming body slumps forward as if his strings have been cut, the scream choking off to one last gag before his head drops against his chest. He tangles limply from the belt, the safe mechanism locking his weight into an awkward position. Stiles can’t hear him breathe.

‘’Derek?’’ he asks in a small voice. ‘’Derek? Hey, hey, hey, big guy.’’

The resounding silence clogs his throat. ‘’Danny?’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Danny responds, ‘’I’m here. I’ve got you. I have a road that you can safely take without bumping into any more unsolicited visitors.’’

Ignoring the man’s words for now, he reaches for the wolf. The man is blissfully unconscious, his torso lax and heavy. He pulls Derek up back to sitting position, despite the stabbing pain of his arm, staring in horror as the wolf’ neck starts bleeding from all over, droplets of blood trickling down his front and back.

He pushes his fingers against the pulse point of Derek’s neck, feeling for a heartbeat. It takes a few moments before he finds it, but he does. It makes him sag in relief, his breathing thready with panic.

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles tries calming himself. ‘’Okay. I’ve got to get out of here. I -- Which way do I go?’’

‘’Take left,’’ Danny’s strong voice guides him from the speaker. ‘’The ramp merges you right back onto the highway. The hunters have turned around, but I re-erased Derek’s chip from their apps so they won’t ever get into such close contact again.’’

‘’They, they know how the Jeep looks like. They can just follow it, no problem. I can’t stop to change the license plate like we did last night.’’

‘’Stiles,’’ Danny says slowly, not unkindly, ‘’You’re literally magic. Push the protection sigil underneath the hand break. It’ll offer you camouflage long enough for you to gain distance and get the fuck out of there.’’

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles nods, swallowing. He’s suddenly feeling very young and out of his depth, despite all the extensive training he’s had, and all the jobs he’s taken as a paid FBI agent. ‘’I -- What do I do with Derek? He’s, uh, unconscious and -- and -- ‘’

‘’Worry about getting yourself out of there first,’’ Danny says firmly. ‘’If the hunters get into close range again, they’ll just do worse damage. If he’s still got a pulse, and he’s breathing well considering the circumstances, then the best aid you can give him is to press on the gas and _go_.’’

  


Stiles sees one of the hunter vehicles coming towards him. ‘’One’s coming up,’’ he says tensely, into which Danny replies, ‘’Just focus. Concentrate on the _need_ to keep up the illusion. When they pass, don’t look into their direction. The spell should force their eyes to just slip over your car without recognizing it.’’

Nodding in response, Stiles clutches at Derek’s limp hand and _believes_.

  


They pass by a police cruiser. The two white men sitting inside are scrutinizing every single baby blue car that whip them by. Stiles keeps his gaze locked forward, and they slide by easily, the policemen not even blinking.

  


Thirty minutes after their encounter, the trembling in his hands finally subsides as they pass through tolls and suspicious vehicles without any complications. He’s still holding Derek’s hand with his own injured one, hoping that even the slightest of touches will help Derek heal.

Danny has been on the line the whole time, offering both silent and vocal backup. After the human had decided that Stiles had a handle on things, he’d called Meredith to ask for help. She’d promised to help them out, and when they would get close to Utah, they’d get immediate shelter and medical aid for Derek. It was still miles and miles away though, and until then, Stiles would just have to count on Derek’s will to live.

‘’Did you get their license plates, names, home addresses and social security numbers?’’ Stiles asks, after what seems to him like an infinite amount of silence.

Danny knows immediately who he means. ‘’Yes. The one who had the remote is called Vivianna Jones. She’s the matriarch of the Jones family, the oldest of three sisters. They’ve branched out the relatives onto states closest to them, holding a huge amount of territory under their guard.’’

‘’Vivianna Jones,’’ Stiles spits the name out. ‘’Okay. Vivianna. Gotcha. What about the others?’’

‘’Vivianna’s driver was his husband, Mitch Jones, family surname used to be O’Connor. They’ve been married since 2006 and have three children, all of whom are part of the hunter lifestyle. The two other cars had mostly paid goons from New York. You’d have seen them in the station where you dragged Derek out from. Those guys were pretty insistent over the phone to come catch Derek up by themselves. Jonas Walker, 46, Hubert Miller, 35, Clark Thompson, 41, and David Young, 39. The Mitchell family have unidentified amount of empty warehouses under their name, branching out to their children and friends that are all playing field in the guilds in NY.’’

‘’And all of these people are registered members?’’

‘’Yes,’’ the man confirms. ‘’Most of them have joined since the clans have been created, though virtual registration has been recorded only from 2011 and up. Old territory disputes that have been written up by werewolves have records dated as far as 1868. The Jones family and the Walker family have reigned before even that.’’

‘’Fuck. So I honestly have to kill the matriarch of a guild that has been ruling with an iron fist for over a century?’’

Danny startles. ‘’You’re planning on killing them?’’

‘’Not all of them,’’ Stiles says bitterly. ‘’Probably. Possibly. Vivianna though. Her head I’m gonna smash in. Can you scrounge up every single little detail about her and her family? When and how she rose to power, what her sisters positions are, and whether or not there are records of them torturing supes illegally and without warrant.’’

‘’Not a problem,’’ Danny says after a moment. ‘’Do you - Is there a plan you need help with?’’

‘’Well,’’ Stiles says with vengeance glinting in his eyes, ‘’Now that you asked . . . ‘’

  
  


Stiles stops at a small town gas station. He needs stronger meds for his arm than he has now, as well as some fresh gauzes for his oozing injury. He needs to reassess Derek’s physical wellbeing as well, get him to wake up, maybe drink something. The wolf hasn’t even twitched once in his unconscious state, which has Stiles practically vibrating out of his skin with worry.

He parks expertly onto the furthest spot on the vacant plot, out of the surveillance cameras feed. He rounds the car and jerks the passenger side door open, hands flying to support Derek’s dead weight as the wolf starts drooping out.

‘’Derek,’’ Stiles calls him softly, ‘’I need you to wake up, man. It’s sort of frustrating that I keep talking to your sleeping face because then you can’t even respond to me with your eyebrows of doom. And don’t even bother to pretend that you don’t participate in conversations with those bushy brows only, because I’ve seen first hand you do it to Peter, and been on the receiving end as well. Which is sort of funny when you try to do that in your beta shift, since your brows disappear and we can only communicate with the heat of your glare. Ups the difficulty level sometimes.’’

Not even a flutter of an eyelid.

Stiles climbs up to the step, towering over the wolf’s body. He bends a little to click the belt open and pulls the quilt off of his frame. The smeared blood it reveals from underneath makes him gag a little.

‘’Jesus. That. That is burnt skin, and those are some spectacular blisters all over your neck. That means. Burn salve? I shouldn’t probably try anything without consulting a pharmacist. Betadine?’’ He lets his gaze take in Derek’s pale, sweaty face, his features still twisted in pain.

‘’Okay, dude. Okay. If I leave you for a few moments so I can run quick little errands, you promise you won’t wake up in the meanwhile and panic? Because I’m not abandoning you, alright? I’m just gonna go over there to buy some essentials.’’

Derek’s head lolls to the side, as much as the spikes allow it to. Stiles huffs out a breath.

‘’Right. Maybe I’ll just leave you a sticky note. I’m pretty sure the glove compartment had at least one working pen, and my twizzler bill can work as a substitute note.’’

He makes quick chicken scratches and places it under the windshield.

_Had to run to the store real quick to buy goods._

_Don’t panic, I’ll be back in a jiffy._

_XX Stiles_

Stiles runs.

 

When he gets back, the wolf is unpredictably still unconscious, but he’s twitching lightly. For a few seconds, Stiles thinks that the hunters have found them again, despite the camouflage, and have reactivated the electric currents to torture Derek. But when he wrenches the door open in panic, there isn’t even a crackle or a tint of burnt flesh in the air.

Well. _Fresh_ smell of burnt flesh.

Curiously, as Stiles gently flops on top of Derek’s frame in relief, the wolf stills. Stiles cranes his neck upwards, seeing Derek’s nostrils flare in his sleep. When the agitated frown smooths out after the wolf catches scent of whatever it is that calms him, Stiles tries to wake him up again.

‘’Derek, my best buddy, I really don’t want to slap you awake, so if you could please, just, open your eyes and reassure me that you’re in the land of the living? That would seriously make me feel like a million dollar lottery winner.’’

Nothing. Stiles pats gently at the less bruised cheek. ‘’Dude. Wake up. I need to put some disinfectant into your wounds, and that is not the way you want to wake up. It might end up someone getting mauled, and that someone would be me, and I don’t need a repeat performance of the last time.’’

When Derek still doesn’t even as much as blink, Stiles decides to tackle things differently. He climbs out of the passenger side and into the back, sitting down behind Derek’s seat. He wraps his arms around the wolf and the chair, aware that he’s a lot stronger at the moment than the wolf is, so he should be able to restrict his movements enough if he wakes up with a bad trigger.

He slides his hands underneath the two sweaters Derek wears, and moves the hands up to Derek’s chest. With gentle circular motions, he starts rubbing over the wolf’s heart, wanting to increase his heart rate.

It takes a moment of soft kneading before Stiles can feel the _thu-thump thu-thump_ of Derek’s heart fasten.

‘’C’mon, buddy, be a Jedi. Be one with the force and find your way back up. My arm’s killing me, and I can bet that your neck isn’t faring much better. Or, any part of you really.’’

Derek shudders, his breath hitching. Stiles keeps up his ministrations. He brings his head to rest on the shoulder of Derek’s seat and continues to talk.

‘’It’s probably gonna be uh, embarrassing for you, but I also need you to pee in a cup, so I’ll know just how much interior damage you gained. If there’s blood in your urine, we probably need to swing by a closest ER for some medical aid. Which might turn to be near impossible without Melissa to check up on you and getting us neatly in and out without raising a fuss. We really gotta get that fucking collar off of you, dude.’’

Sighing, Stiles looks down to Derek’s limp hands. ‘’We’re also gonna have to be practical and follow your condition, probably even mark down your symptoms. I’m pretty sure your heart kind of stopped for a couple seconds there, before another shock rejuvenated it, so, uh, we have to keep track of your heart beats too. Sounds fun, huh?’’

The wolf lets out a small, confused moan.

Stiles shuts his mouth with a clack, waiting for other signs of awareness. Derek sways a little in his seat, another shudder wracking his body.

‘’Derek?’’

There’s a small whine that sounds a little involuntary to Stiles. He stills his hands, keeping them pressed against the wolf’s pectorals, offering Derek some body heat his own system doesn’t seem to be generating. The wolf is shaking his head, taking a sudden, deep breath, his heartbeat changing from a slow, steady pace to a gallop. It feels a little incredible to Stiles, to know the exact moment Derek surfaces from unconsciousness, and he wonders if this is what it’s always like for wolves.

No wonder Federal Agent Shanessa always knows when he’s just about to grab a couple z’s in his desk. She can actually _hear_ it.

‘’Hey, Derek, it’s okay. See those hands of yours? No? Look down, buddy. Look at your hands. Count to ten. That’s how many fingers you have. Ten. Not a dream.’’

Much to Stiles’ surprise though, Derek doesn’t lash out. Doesn’t even try to budge out of Stiles’ hold. He just takes in ragged, thin breaths, fingers twitching impotently in his lap, like he’s trying to form fists but can’t quite manage the act.

Stiles’ mind blacks out for a moment. He wonders if Derek actually suffered nervous system damage. The convulses the shocks put him through, muscles contracting as if in a seizure, might have done irreparable wreck in both Derek’s brain as well as his spinal cord.

He takes his hands away from the wolf and puffs out hysterical little huffs of air. ‘’Okay, okay, okay, um, fuck, Derek, talk to me? Tell me something. Anything.’’

Clambering to the driver’s seat, Stiles takes a good look at Derek’s face. The man’s eyes are open, though they do not see much. He looks completely out of it, his blinks heavy and slow.

Stiles grabs at Derek’s chin gently, turning the wolf’s head in his direction. ‘’Hey, Derek? You in there?’’

Dazed, confused eyes meet his, and the wolf opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

‘’Okay. Everything’s cool. I can handle this,’’ Stiles mutters. ‘’Can you tell me who you are? Who I am?’’

Derek blinks, staring with detached gaze at Stiles’ face. One moment his eyes seem vacant, and then Stiles brings his own face an inch away from the wolf’s, sharing his breath, and the next second a glint of recognition flares in Derek’s expression.

‘’Oh thank god,’’ Stiles breathes, and brings the wolf to an awkward, over the clutch panel hug. Derek goes with the motions, letting out a moan of pain as it flares up all of the hurts on his body. Stiles releases him, though he doesn’t go far. He needs to get through to Derek, to assess his physical and mental condition. He cups the man’s face.

‘’Okay bud. I know the next thing I’m gonna ask you to do is gonna be super hard for you, but, please, just try. Okay? Because I need to know whether we can continue driving down to Fresno or if we need Danny to locate a supernatural friendly doctor to admit you under their care. Whatever you need right now, we’ll make it happen.’’

The words seem to register slowly, but they do. Derek offers a glacial paced nod in agreement.

‘’Okay, good. I’m gonna need words from you, is that alright? The collar didn’t damage your throat too much for it to impair your speech, right?’’

It takes approximately twenty seconds, but Derek manages to respond. ‘’No.’’

Stiles heaves a huge sigh of relief. ‘’Can you tell me who we are?’’

‘’Derek and -- St-- Stiles,’’ Derek says in a quiet rasp.

Snapping his fingers, Stiles cheers, ‘’That’s a fact. Good. Can you tell me where it hurts the most?’’

Closing his eyes, Derek takes stock. It alarms Stiles a lot when he just ends up with, ‘’Everywhere.’’

‘’That, that is not good. Fuck.’’ Contemplating this for a minute, Stiles keeps his hands on Derek’s face, caressing it absently. They’re going to need to do some serious first aid to Derek’s now more extensive injuries, and he’s going to need Derek to pee in that damn cup.

‘’How much muscle power do you have right now?’’

Derek shakes his head slowly, looking down at his hands. Stiles looks down too, letting go of Derek’s cheeks to lean onto the holster between the two. Like earlier, the wolf’s hands don’t quite manage to curl into a fist, and the muscles on the man’s arms rest lax and powerless at his sides.

‘’Damn it. I kind of need you to pee in a cup so I can see if your urine contains blood. I don’t think you can smell it on yourself, right? Since all of it is so. . .’’ he gestures to the whole of the wolf, ‘’Thorough.’’

Derek looks a little resigned at his fate. ‘’Well. Let me. Let me think of something,’’ Stiles tries to reassure him, but he probably misses the mark by far.

He’s already seen Derek’s junk more than once, holding it for him shouldn't be that much of a problem, right?

Right?

  
  


The whole car smells of antiseptic. Stiles’ cheeks are ruby red from embarrassment, the flush littering down to his chest. Helping Derek pee in the cup wasn’t actually that bad. The sensation on the tips of his fingers as Derek’s urine finally came through was a lot weird, and possibly a little scarring, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

Oh no.

He had to help Derek redress inside the car since the electrical burns formed a string of weeping blisters throughout the whole of his skin. Some of the worst of them were in the softest places, like the wolf’s groin, the bends of his knees, his armpits. Attempting to administer good care in such tiny conditions proved to be extremely difficult, and once Stiles had witnessed it all, he’d practically forced Derek to lay down in the back, to get his weight off of the welts.

 _The welts that were almost lining up the entirety of his bottom_.

There was almost no peep at all from Derek, but Stiles saw and felt his pain in every involuntary flinch, especially when he applied the stinging disinfectant into the wounds. Afterwards he processed to place the multiple frozen pea bags he bought onto some of worst of the burns to help his skin cool down.

Once they hit the road and both of them got some actual pain relief from the pharmacy, stuff stronger than tylenol, courtesy of Melissa, they could finally breathe easy.

Stiles sips on his Gatorade, eyes glued to Derek from the rearview mirror when he doesn’t look at the road. Even the wolf had managed to drink a little, liquids soothing his dry mouth.

‘’So hey. During all this mayhem we’ve had, dad has taken some liberties and ordered you a new driver’s license and a passport. So now when we get settled down to Beacon Hills, you can actually access your money again. I don’t know if your bank would even agree to send you a new card without an ID. Or uh, an address.’’

‘’Thank you,’’ Stiles hears Derek respond faintly.

‘’Not at all problem, dude. Gotta get your support systems back up so you won’t be left homeless. Not that my dad would even allow that, he’d probably just strong arm you to come stay with him. He’s really taken a liking to you, since you impressed him with your wolfy knowledge during my -- ‘’ he falters a little before soldiering on, ‘’My Nogitsune episode. We would’ve been screwed without you.’’

There’s a rustle, and a small huff. Stiles smiles a little lopsidedly.

‘’Yeah, yeah. You get embarrassed by compliments. I hear you.’’ He snorts. ‘’You’re fine with me having my face and hands practically in your junk and ass, but the second someone says ‘Good job!’ you barely resist slinking back into the shadows.’’

He taps a little at the clutch and considers putting the radio back on. He’d shut it off in order to listen to Derek’s breathing, unable to stop himself from feeling for a pulse every few minutes during the tense ride to the gas station.

‘’Pot to kettle,’’ Derek mumbles. It makes Stiles grin. He might be awful at receiving positive feedback, but Derek takes it to a whole nother level.

‘’Hey. If I turn on the radio, can you tell me if you’re about to fall asleep? So that I can monitor things a little better?’’

‘’Yeah, okay,’’ Derek agrees. ‘’I’ll try to stay awake.’’

‘’Well, you don’t have to stay awake for my sake. I can survive eight hours in a car with just the radio as my chatting buddy. I only meant that we should, kind of treat this as a case of concussion where, if you fall asleep, I’ll wake you up every couple hours just to see you haven’t ruptured anything in your brain.’’

‘’I can do that.’’

‘’Thanks man,’’ Stiles says, reaching with his arm to the back, patting gently at what he thinks is Derek’s hip. ‘’And don’t worry about the top 50 pop songs. I’ve found just the perfect station for you.’’

He switches the radio back on, tuning it a little until he finds the right one.

_‘And if you’re tuning in just now, you’re listening to Retro radio. We play the most popular songs of the 80’s and 90’s, so you can just sit back and relax . .’_

  
  
  
  


Stiles’ heart beats frantically, his veins filled with adrenaline. The half circle of the moon shines brightly against the smooth surface of the lake, illuminating the trees surrounding it.

He’s half crouched behind a tree, blending into the shadows. The tracker on his phone tells that he’s about to be approached from the front, the tiny red dot blinking as it makes its way through the map.

Stiles tucks the device into his pocket, gripping his lacrosse stick tightly. Anticipation makes him vibrate with barely contained energy.

His Jeep has been parked haphazardly in front of the trail that leads to the lake, both doors left wide open in his haste to get further inside the woods. He hopes the hunters won’t go through his stuff. He hates it when strangers touch his things. The energy they always leave behind somehow clashes with Stiles’ own, lingering almost like a godawful stench, making him instantly unhappy.

There’s a crack of a snapped stick somewhere in the distance. He perks in alert, taking inaudible deep breaths to steady himself.

‘’Come on, puppy. There’s no need to hide from us. We can tell _exactly_ where you are,’’ a woman’s leery voice echoes the quiet woods. Stiles rolls his eyes.

‘’Did your brave little companion abandon you? Such a poor little thing, aren’t you, Hale?’’

He grasps the lacrosse stick so hard his knuckles go white. Does she really think Cruella De Vil kind of monologue would help her chase the wolf out of hiding? It certainly didn’t work for Cruella, in any of the movies or cartoons.

Stiles bites his lip, almost tasting blood. She’s close now.

‘’Come, come, puppy. Don’t make this harder than it has to be. You can come peacefully and avoid any more itty bitty hurts on your fur, or you can resist, and instead of a pelt, I’ll mound your stuffed head in my office.’’

Holy shit, the lady is completely nuts.

He hears her careful steps closer, the cocking of her gun. She’s mere feet in front of him, the light of her phone exposing her location. She’s undoubtedly following the red blinking dot on her device.

Quitely, Stiles widens his stance, moving the stick in position.

‘’Derek, no need be shy. I’ve seen you -- ‘’

She steps into his clear sight from behind the trunk Stiles is hiding against, and he _swings_.

The tuned and heavy crosse stick cracks against her skull, splintering it, her head exploding in all directions. Droplets of blood and gore fly against Stiles’ face and torso, the moon exposing the fiery fury dancing in his eyes.

He yanks the stick off the mutilated torso and clicks a button in its side, sharp blades pushing out at the head of it. Stiles proceeds to hack her head, or what’s left of it, off of her body, ensuring that she won’t be resurrected.

From a little further afar, he hears the other hunter approaching. He goes back into hiding, easily swallowed into the shadows. When the man comes close enough to see the damage on Vivianna, he lets out a cry of _‘No!’_

The husband then, Stiles guesses. He doesn’t show remorse, as the hunter collapses onto his knees in front of his dead wife, Stiles slithers out from the shadows behind him, and introduces the man with the same demise his wife met. He thinks of the damage in Derek’s body, his agonized howls echoing inside his car, and chops the man’s head off his shoulders too. The legacy of the Jones family will end here, in a nameless grave in the middle of nowhere, with nobody to bless them into their last journey to hell.

He litters the bodies with wolfsbane, carving a symbol of justice into their bodies before he lits them on fire. The flames crackle into life, burning bright and purple. When morning comes, there won’t be a single piece of evidence left, but the nature around the scene will flourish, the Jones’ life energy gifted back to mother earth now.

Stiles whistles as he gets back to his Jeep, ready for the hot food that is waiting for him back at the hotel. The knowledge that Derek is safe and secure in the hotel room while the hunters that once tormented him now lay dead, makes him skip a step happily.

Tomorrow they’ll finally reach Fresno, and can put the last piece of the plan into motion.

  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Sorry for the long wait for the second last chapter. (Does anyone else notice I have pacing problems? No?)
> 
> So first of all, addressing an anon from my tumblr, here’s the reason why I never answer to anyone’s comments here, and why that apparently makes me seem very cold and ungrateful.  
> I’m _so_ sorry for anyone who’s felt that way, or been sad that I haven’t replied to their fantastic comments, which I adore, love and bow down to anyone willing to leave a few words of encouragement. Seriously. You guys are amazing!
> 
> Here’s why; I have a severe anxiety disorder. Some days I’m too emotionally exhausted to even answer my own family and their messages. I work as a cashier, so all of my social energy goes to my work, which leaves me a blubbering mess of a person afterwards, who feels her heart beat faster with joy and excitement for every piece of kudos and kind words, but also feels a little too intimidated and tired to respond to your kindness. I can only hope that creating and posting fics and chapters will be enough to show you guys that I love you, and am eternally grateful for everyone who takes their time to read through my writing.
> 
> Hugs to all of you, and I hope you can forgive me for not answering your comments, even if I appreciate and love them to bits!

 

The whole room smells of oranges. Stiles peels one fruit after the other, giving half of it to Derek as he scrolls down the document Danny sent him hours ago. Derek takes his portions without an argument, using his claw to tear off the excessive white peel on the fruit. Stiles just stuffs his face, not really tasting either the bitterness or the sweetness.

They’ve been quiet for awhile, both of them still reeling from the intensity of the nightmares they had throughout half of the night. And after being woken up for the third time, Stiles had just decided to stay awake. They were already in Utah, eight and half an hours away from Fresno, which made them ten hours away from Beacon Hills. When the alarm clock on the night table had shifted into 4:24 AM, Stiles had woken Derek up one last time from the grips of another torturing dream. Derek had opted to stay awake to get an early start, the black bruises underneath his eyes telling that no matter how much sleep he’d gotten, he hadn’t actually rested.

Stiles sighs. ‘’Okay. So. If we leave in twenty minutes, we should hit Fresno somewhere between two-three pm, depending on how much time we use for pit stops. In Fresno we have to pick up Meredith, so we probably have downtime there for an hour. We might hit Beacon Hills around seven, again, depending on how many times we have to stop for a break.’’

Derek nods quietly.

‘’Dad told me he’d be home after six, so we can just go directly to his house. Get that damn collar off for once and for all.’’ Rubbing his eyes, Stiles chances a glance towards the wolf. ‘’Do you -- ‘’ he starts, but clamps his mouth shut. He wonders if Derek would like him to contact Peter. Despite their differences and the past they’ve shared, Peter _is_ still part of Derek’s family. Having someone familiar to help him settle could be a good idea, if Derek wants his uncle there.

Stiles, personally, has no qualms with the older Hale anymore. The Ghost Riders and the time spent trapped in that invisible station has made a lot of things clearer for him, in regards of Peter. And one thing that Stiles is certain of, is that Peter’s character has grown a lot since he’d gotten his revenge. He’s tried being a, well, maybe not a _good_ father, but a father nonetheless to Malia, and Stiles appreciates that kind of effort. And Derek could really do with some paternal taking care of.

‘’What.’’

Shaking his head, Stiles throws a couple slices into his mouth. He chews for a moment, considering his words. ‘’I was just wondering if you’d like me to try and get in contact with Peter?’’

Derek gives him a blank look.

With a shrug, Stiles offers him another half of an orange. ‘’Danny’s still looking into the whole,’’ he gestures with his hand offhandedly, ‘’Cora thing, so. I thought that having at least one familial face would dunno, boost your healing or something?’’

The sentence is followed by silence, the wolf’s brows crunching together. He lowers his gaze downcast, expression unreadable. ‘’I don’t think he’d want me around much,’’ Derek confesses quietly. ‘’The fire. . . It damaged so much of him. He lost everything in it. He knows my part in all of it, and he hates me for it. Cora, too. And I don’t blame them.’’

Stiles barely refrains from rolling his eyes. Goddamn self-sacrificing _idiot_ . ‘’It’s not that I want to remind you of anything painful or anything, but _you_ lost everything in that fire too, Derek. And sure, the fact that you and Laura abandoned Peter in that facility and scurried up to New York, possibly slowing his healing abilities without a family nearby, unhinged him in ways that neither of us can comprehend. If I had been in Laura’s shoes, my decisions would’ve been far different, but she was panicking, and fear makes us do some irrational things. _You_ , on the other hand, were _fifteen_ , unable to make any rational decisions for yourself or Laura. Which, it wasn’t even your place, since, you know, Laura was your alpha and the adult and all. But while Peter went insane with rage, doling revenge on everyone and everything that moved, you _didn’t_ . You carried the guilt with you, buried and mourned Laura while hunters were literally hot on your heels, and yes, you were rough with us, but you never stopped showing kindness and compassion towards me and Scott, in your own damaged ways. You literally could’ve just left us to deal with everything on our own, leave us for _dead_ , but you persisted, time and time again, to teach us, to help us. Even when we fought with you about _everything_. Fuck, Peter tried to kill all of us yet you hesitated in raising your hand against him because he’s your uncle. And you wanted to believe that somewhere in that scarred heart of his, Peter would still have a shred of humanity left. Which he does, now at least.’’

Stiles presses his shoulder against Derek’s. ‘’And if there’s one thing I know for certain about your uncle, is that family means everything to him. I’m sure that once he hears what happened, he’ll at least want to come visit you, see that you’re okay.’’ He pauses. ‘’And he doesn’t hate you. You’ve both made mistakes and reaped the consequences. It’s pointless to keep drowning in the past, since it’ll help nobody in the long run. Both of you deserve to move on with your lives.’’

Derek exhales quietly. ‘’Can I think about it?’’

‘’Sure,’’ Stiles agrees easily. ‘’Just let me know when we reach Fresno, so I’ll have him at my dad’s house ready if you want him to come.’’

Stiles watches Derek nod slowly. He claps the wolf on the back gently. ‘’Good. Now lemme read this raport through quickly and we can go.’’

 

 

* * *

 

 

The weather is drastically different than it was in New York. As the sun begins to climb up the sky, it heats up everything in its path, soaking the world in its warmth. It feels a lot more like a spring morning than a winter one, making Stiles skip on his jacket altogether.

Derek still wraps himself in the quilt, but he’s only wearing one layer of sweaters, instead of two. The seat has been leveled back enough that he’s almost horizontal, most his weight off of his buttocks and the backs of his thighs, concentrating more on his back.

They’ve been driving in quiet for the past three hours they’ve spent on the road, with only the radio playing on the background. Stiles’ finger taps restlessly on the steering wheel, deep in his thoughts. The visor on his side is down, shielding his eyes, even as he has his sunglasses on.

‘’So,’’ he says after god knows how long, ‘’You never did tell me how you escaped.’’

Derek turns his head to look at him.

Stiles gives a shrug under the wolf’s scrutiny. ‘’You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’’ he says, though he knows his scent gives away exactly how eager he is to find out, ‘’But it _would_ benefit our research. Whether you were in the middle of being delivered somewhere or if you escaped a facility or. . .’’

There’s a huff, before Derek says, ‘’I punched through a door.’’

Stiles blinks. ‘’You. You punched through a door?’’ he asks flatly.

‘’Yes.’’

After a moment of Derek not continuing his explanation, Stiles moans. ‘’Oh my god, you can’t just stop there! Context! Details! From where did you punch yourself free from? An apartment? A house? A van? How did you end up in a metro station in Manhattan? Were you in New York to begin with or did you come from another city? Did you take down any hunters in your path, and if so, did you know their names and how many?’’

The wolf stares at Stiles’ shoulder, idly rubbing his inner wrist. ‘’It was an apartment building, on the edges of Bronx. I was -- It was a cellar of a one, at least I think so. There were no windows and after getting up some stairs, I ended up in ground level.” He hesitates for a moment, trying to find the correct words. “Some of the hunters, they’re. . . They marry inside clans. I guess it’s easier that way, when the other is already part of the game and isn’t opposed to the idea of killing another human being.’’

Frowning in confusion, Stiles asks, ‘’..So? What’s that got to do with anything?”

‘’So they take their sexual frustrations out on their prisoners.’’

Something drops to the bottom of Stiles stomach, his heart lurching. ‘’They. . . Rape their captured supes?’’

Derek shrugs. ‘’It’s better than being electrocuted or drowned or whatever.’’

Stiles is too horrified to speak for a few minutes, mulling the appalling revelation over. ‘’So you escaped when someone was -- Trying to -- ‘’

‘’Yes,’’ Derek says bluntly. ‘’She was one of the new ones, the younger generation. Mostly the older heads of the clan pump us so full of drugs that we’re completely out of it, unable to do anything but lay there. She must have not known how much it would take to knock out a were my size, since I only got a little dizzy when she strapped me down. After she got us both naked, I pretended to be half unconscious, so once she straddled my lap, I bashed my head against hers and knocked her out. Once she was out of the count, it was easy to get out since she hadn’t even bothered with a mountain ash ring.’’

Stiles barely resists gagging. Derek doesn’t notice, just continues in a detached voice.

‘’I escaped through Harlem, where people were more inclined to help me hide. It was dark outside at the time, so it was easier to blend with the shadows. I got to lay low in a few different seven elevens and barber shops, a couple women dragging me into their clothing stores whenever a cop car passed by. How I ended up in Manhattan where you were, I have no idea.’’

‘’Jesus,’’ Stiles murmurs. ‘’Did you at least kill her?’’

‘’Bashed her head in. Her skull splintered in pieces when it hit the sharp edge of the medical table.’’

‘’Good,’’ Stiles says ferociously. He grips the steering wheel so hard his knuckles go white. He gives a quick look at the wolf, seeing his face blank, eyes staring numbly at the roof of the car. He knows the bleakness behind the detached gaze, has experienced it in some level himself. _Depression and deep rooted trauma_ , his mind supplies.

‘’You need so much therapy,’’ he says quietly, shaking his head. He thinks back about Derek’s earlier relationships, his history of sexual abuse. He wonders if Derek has ever had a healthy experience of sex that hasn’t been clouded with manipulation, magical drugging, or flat out doing it for the partner he’s been with, afraid that if he didn’t participate in sex, he’d be abandoned. He knows about Kate now. Knows very well how Jennifer whammied the were with a spell to make him trust her, to do whatever she wanted him to do. Derek doesn’t confine in people, not without the other earning that trust first, and the way he and Jennifer just had met and he’d started a relationship with her should’ve been the first warning sign that not everything was as it should be.

What he’s not sure is Braeden. She was fierce, bold and strong, and she had only wanted sex from Derek, not love, not commitment. And in exchange, she’d protect him, let him be vulnerable in his humanity. Taught him how to use a gun when he couldn’t access his claws. Stiles wonders where she is now.

‘’What happened with you and Braeden?’’

Derek heaves a sigh, not taken aback by the non-sequitur. ‘’She pursued the case of the desert wolf. I wanted to be with Cora.’’

It doesn’t tell him much, but Stiles nods in understanding. Braeden was always going to part ways with Derek, because the wolf was not built for casual. He craves pack, family, something steady. She couldn’t give that to him.

Stiles doesn’t know what to say so he doesn’t say anything. What he _is_ going to do, is hook Derek up with his therapist if the older man wants to. It’s a high time someone addressed all those pent up emotions inside him. He’ll have to be very careful though. Derek is fantastic at pulling up his walls if he thinks someone is pitying him. He’ll have to test the waters for awhile, see how he reacts to even the idea of visiting a professional psychologist.

But that’s a thought to another day. First they have to survive the current one.

  
  


Fresno is as busy and packed as always, and Stiles grumbles at the high tensity of people filling up the space. Damn Meredith and living too close to the populated center. He’s thankful they had the idea to eat at a diner just outside city limits, so they easily avoided the crowds.

Not that Derek even got to enter one, Stiles just hopped in and out, bringing their meals to the car.

‘’Hey Siri,’’ Stiles says, as he changes lanes to the one emerging with an intersection closest to Target’s parking lot. The phone bleeps.

‘’Call Meredith,’’ he orders the device.

 _‘’Calling Meredith Tropical Fish.’’_ Stiles taps at the speaker button when the call dials.

‘’Why do you keep putting emojis behind the names of your contacts?’’ Derek grumbles from beside him. Stiles grins in response.

‘’Because it’s _fun_ , Derek Cactus Snowcap Mountain.’’

‘’. . .That doesn’t even make sense.’’

Stiles blows a raspberry. ‘’It does to me,’’ he says cheerily. ‘’Right now Scott has only two knives behind his name because he missed our gaming night. Mostly he deserves two monkey face emojis.’’

Derek sounds annoyed. ‘’Why not at least put a wolf in there?’’

‘’Because if my phone was to get into the wrong hands, there’s no way in hell I’d expose you like that. The hunters would immediately put two and two together.’’

Derek has nothing to offer for that so he just grumbles under his breath. Stiles ignores him.

The call connects, and a woman’s voice greets them quietly with a, ‘’Meredith.’’

‘’Hi Yudith,’’ Stiles says, ‘’We’re two minutes from your location. Are you outside?’’

‘’Farthest corner, behind the family only parking.’’

‘’Gotcha. No unsolicited company?’’

‘’None on the radar and none in my immediate sight.’’

Whistling happily, Stiles curves onto the parking lot of a local Target, squinting at the people gathering. ‘’Why is this place so full? It’s not even sale season.’’

‘’Nearing four o’clock rush hour,’’ Derek mutters. Meredith makes an affirmative noise from the other side of the line.

‘’Okay, well, get ready for a hasty pickup then,’’ Stiles says to her. ‘’Who knows how much prying eyes are in here that are more perceptive than they should be.’’

He navigates through the almost full lot, swearing every time someone comes a little too close to denting Roscoe. They spot the woman easily. She’s a contrast against the horribly cheesy pink van that’s been filled with Furby stickers, her neutral green clothes making her stand out. Her dreads have been gathered up in a bun on the top of her head, a couple of them colored in strokes of purple. Her stoic face is a great comfort to Stiles, her level headed complexion something he heavily relied on once upon a time.

Coming to a halt in front of her, Derek slowly pulls himself up from his seat and out of the car, holding the door for her. Stiles smothers his grin when he sees Meredith give a rather unimpressed stare at the wolf, cataloging the visible hurts on display.

She takes her bag and hefts it in the legroom of the front seat, but doesn’t climb in. Instead, she jerks her thumb over to the door, glaring Derek into the backseat of the Jeep, making sure he gets in without any further injuries. Derek obeys meekly, clearly sensing that Meredith is not only a wolf, but an alpha at that, and stronger than him at the moment.

After they get Derek inside and comfortable, does she get into the car herself. She slants a look at Stiles when he greets her, and says, ‘’His name is not Miguel Juarez Cinqua Tiago, is it?’’

Stiles blinks in confusion. ‘’I never said it was?’’

Meredith gives him a _look_. Stiles shrinks a little bit in his seat. ‘’I mean, we used that as a codename for him in our conversations with Danny, so uh, he must’ve kept using it?’’

Without any further ado, Meredith turns around in her seat and locks her eyes with Derek’s, extending her hand. ‘’Meredith Verona III Boyd.’’

Derek freezes, and Stiles internally curses. He completely forgot to mention to Derek that Meredith was actually Boyd’s _grandmother_. He cringes at the myriads of emotions that are no doubt crossing the wolf’s face right now.

‘’Derek Hale,’’ Derek greets quietly, reservedly. His hand is shaking when he grasps it into hers. He’s clearly bracing himself for the blame of Boyd’s death, something Stiles knows isn’t coming.

‘’You were the one that bit my grandson, then? Vernon IV Boyd?’’

‘’I - Yes, ma’am,’’ he confirms. Her grip tightens just a fraction.

‘’Thank you,’’ she says. ‘’He spoke a lot of good things about you.’’

‘’I -- He did?’’ Derek asks faintly, letting the older wolf’s hand go. She nods, her face just as stoic as Boyd’s had been, but with severity that age and loss has piled on.

‘’You offered him a way out of a hopeless situation. His mama has so many kids, she ain’t able to take care of all of them. When you offered him your pack, a chance to be a wolf, my boy got lighter, happier. He finally got friends and a family that had actual time to spend with him. Something that was different from the time he used to spend with his siblings.’’

‘’But he died for it,’’ Derek says raggedly. ‘’By _my_ hand.’’

‘’We all die one day. Death is inevitable. Did my Vernon meet his too early? I think so. But God has plans for all of us, and God will take away early those He deems worthy to be with Him. You made him happy those last months he spent on earth, and for those, he was exuberant and contented with life,’’ Meredith says seriously. ‘’That I am grateful for. My grandson’s death isn’t something you should shoulder. Vernon made his choices, God made His. That’s between them.’’

‘’And it was the Alpha pack, Derek, that killed Boyd. Not you. You were just, dunno, used as a tool -- ‘’ Stiles clamps his mouth shut when he realizes just how far the loss of autonomy over his own body reaches with the wolf. He hadn’t even thought of it as Derek losing control of himself, but that had been exactly what had happened.

Meredith nods, and Stiles sees from the rear view mirror that Derek has turned his face away from them, curling a little in on himself in the backseat. The woman seems to sense that talking to Derek isn’t going to help them do any good right now, so she just frowns and turns to buckle herself in.

‘’So uh,’’ Stiles breaks the silence awkwardly, ‘’Next stop, Beacon Hills?’’

A phone blings with a notification, and Meredith plucks her device from her pocket, tapping at the smartphone. She looks at Stiles and says, ‘’Better leave fast then, boy. We’re going to have company soon enough.’’

Stiles makes a face and puts his car on reverse, backing out of the spot and into the mass of cars trying to find space for themselves. He checks the glamour is on, the sigil glowing faintly, and listens as the older wolf helps him navigate out of the parking lot, and into the traffic.

 

The company reaches them twenty minutes later. Stiles grits his teeth and drives along with the others, keeping up with the speed limit.

They pass the hunters by without any of them even blinking into their direction.

 

They don’t talk throughout the rest of the drive. Derek seems to have fallen asleep again, after a dose of Tylenol, and Meredith is as quiet as Boyd had been, a family trait, it seems. Stiles is content with the silence, surprisingly, as the radio fills the car with sounds, so he doesn’t feel the impulse to chatter away get a hold of him.

Instead, he focuses on getting them safely home, glaring at the increasing amount of red dots on his hunter map, the whole community seemingly joining the hunt. It flares up his anger, renewing the coals and sparking the flames.

He quells it as much as he can, but smothering the rage has proved to be useless and rather dangerous to him. So he calms himself down, and waits for the right opportunity to present his anger. The adrenaline of it will most probably help him later.

 

‘’How long as he worn the collar?’’ Meredith asks, just as they’re half an hour away from Beacon Hills.

Stiles shrugs. ‘’Long enough to get used to it. He isn’t exactly in the position to speak too much since the spikes are digging into his throat, so I haven't had the chance to ask him about it.’’

She doesn’t speak after that.

  


The cheery ‘Welcome to Beacon Hills!’ sign makes Stiles sigh in relief. He’s done with being cooped up in his car, and his legs are seriously cramping up. His arm is aching like it’s being crushed continuously between two hammers that pound at it one at a time. He calls his dad.

_‘’Sheriff Stilinski.’’_

‘’Hey dad,’’ Stiles greets the man tiredly. ‘’So, we’re like, ten minutes out from your house. Are you at home?’’

There’s a rustle and then his father affirms it.

‘’Okay, well. I’ve got both Derek and Meredith with me, and one of them needs to have things off his body stat, and the other has sedative that should help us do the hard labor. Do you still have those iron pliers in the garage?’’

 _‘’I do,’’_ John says. _‘’I also got the tarp we used to rake leaves onto that you told me to bring down._ ’’

‘’Good,’’ Stiles says. ‘’Thank you.’’

_‘’I also had Mr. Mahealani pay a visit. He said his son had asked him to deliver certain things to my house, and then dumped two coat racks worth of clothes onto my doorstep. What’s that all about? They definitely don’t look like the kind of clothes you wear on the regular.’’_

‘’Oh! Yeah, no, those are for Derek, not for me,’’ Stiles says, cheering up a bit. ‘’Can you put all of them into my old room? Preferably put my dirty clothes on top of them if there are any left lying around.’’

John sputters a little on the other side. '' _Why would I put your dirty, smelly old garments on top of brand new clothes? That doesn’t sound even remotely sane! . . . Or hygienic.''_

Snorting, Stiles shakes his head in amusement. ‘’Trust me, dad. Just do it. It’s a scent thing. Werewolves hate new clothes if they can’t smother the plastic and other human smells off of them before they wear them. I’d ask you to wash them but you change your laundry detergent so often that it wouldn’t smell familiar to Derek, so the only way to get him to put any of them on is to smother them in my sweat.’’ He adds, ‘’Sorry,’’ as an afterthought, not wanting to think what sort of scenarios his father is playing in his head at the moment.

His father mutters something probably unfavorable, before he sighs. _‘’I’ll go see if there are any of your old clothes still lying around. Anything else I should be aware of before you arrive?’’_

‘’Nah,’’ Stiles says. ‘’Just. Brace yourself for Derek, okay? Don’t stare too much or crowd him. He needs his space, even on a good day, and this is definitely a bad one.’’

_‘’That doesn’t reassure me in the least, son.’’_

‘’It really wasn’t meant to be reassuring. Just trying to ease Derek’s discomfort over the whole situation.’’ He pauses. ‘’Not that he’ll be feeling too good after we dig the chip out of his back.’’

 _‘’Just get yourselves here safely and we’ll see what we can do,’’_ John says calmly. _‘’I’ll put on some coffee. I assume we’ll be having more company later on?’’_

‘’Yeah,’’ Stiles confirms. ‘’A bunch of guys are coming down around ten so that we can go over some fine details before we take any sort of action. We can get a hotel room though, if you think it’ll be too crowded or that you’ll need to be out of earshot, for plausible deniability and all that.’’

 _‘’I think I better stay,’’_ John says firmly.

Making a face, Stiles says ‘’We’ll talk about that later. I’ll see you soon, okay?’’

‘’ _Okay_ ,’’ John says. _‘’See you soon. Drive safe.’’_

‘’Yeah. Love you. Bye.’’

 _‘’Love you too, son,’_ ’ his father responds warmly.

Stiles ends the call and sighs. Meredith gives him an imploring look to which he just shrugs. ‘’I hate it when dad is in the thick with us, but I know keeping him out of it would pull him right in the middle.’’

‘’Sounds just about right for him to be your father,’’ the woman nods serenely.

‘’I refuse to understand any implications of that,’’ Stiles sniffs haughtily, smothering a grin when Meredith just gives a minimal shake of her head. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all.

 

The sun is setting just as they pull onto a familiar road. It colors everything in splashes of oranges and reds and yellows, shadows starting to blanket the earth. When they reach the Stilinski residence, the first thing Stiles does is pull is father in for a long, tight hug. He hasn’t seen the man in months, the distance affecting them both. Sometimes a couple weeks might go by without them contacting each other. Stiles knows his dad doesn’t want to bother his college life by pestering his son too often, even if the talks with his father are the highlight of his week. It leaves them both lonely with bouts of heartache, and on worst nights, Stiles contemplates just leaving his school and his job and just moving back to Cali, just so he can be there for his dad.

Of course, if John heard any of that kind of talk, he’d kick his ass three ways to sunday. He wouldn’t want Stiles to ruin his future just because he’s worried for his father. None of the school fees have been too easy to pay off either, though it’s gotten easier with Stiles’ line of work and the handsome paycheck he gets for each case.  

‘’Missed you,’’ Stiles says a little thickly, squeezing his father from the middle.

‘’Missed you too, son,’’ John whispers back, his hand buried affectionately into Stiles’ unruly hair. ‘’Come on,’’ he says after a while, clapping Stiles on the back, ‘’Let’s go see how your friend is doing.’’

Stiles sighs, reluctantly releasing his embrace on his father and leads the man to the Jeep.

Derek is still lying in the back, staring fuzzily at the ceiling, one of his hands rubbing at his eyes.

‘’You okay to get out, dude?’’ Stiles asks, opening the back door further. Meredith gives him space, opting to greet the sheriff and leave Stiles to get Derek safely down.

The wolf nods, slowly pulling himself to a sitting position. He looks beyond exhausted. The whites of the bandages around his neck have darkened, the blood seeping through the three thick layers.

Stiles climbs inside, supporting himself on the seat where Derek’s legs lay. ‘’Okay. Let’s get you inside the house, yeah? Get that collar off. Make use of our shower, get yourself to feel a little bit more like you.’’

Nodding, Derek lets himself be carefully helped down the Jeep and onto the soft, chilly grass. He’s not wearing any shoes or socks, his bare feet curling against the cold, damp earth. Stiles thinks about bringing an arm over his shoulder to support Derek’s weight while he gets in, but thinks that the collar might do some more damage at that.

Stiles thinks for a second, nose wrinkling, before he just asks, ‘’How embarrassed would you be if I carried you inside?’’

Derek rubs his face and rolls his eyes. ‘’I can walk just fine,’’ he says stubbornly, even when both of them know how much pain it actually generates in his body to use the muscles. ‘’And your arm is injured. You’d drop me faster than you’d scoop me up.’’

‘’Hey, now,’’ Stiles says mildly, ‘’You’re severely underestimating my willpower.’’

‘’Just open the doors for me,’’ Derek huffs.

Before he can make a witty retort, he hears his father gasp loudly, and turns to see the man looking at Derek with an expression that’s pure horror. John has covered his mouth with his hands, his face draining from blood.

‘’Jesus,’’ John chokes out, and steps closer, unable to tear his eyes away. ‘’Jesus. I --’’ the man clamps his mouth shut and closes his eyes for ten seconds, which he counts under his breath, before he composes himself enough. Slowly, he opens his eyes, letting the mask of professional officer of the law slip in place, figuring he can freak out about everything much later, much _much later,_ and preferably while he’s alone and out of Derek’s earshot.

‘’Let’s get you all situated inside,’’ he says finally, gesturing towards the house. Stiles nods, hovering over Derek as he takes painstakingly halting steps. Meredith grabs all the bags from the car and goes in before any of the others, slipping her shoes off at the door and making her way to the living room.

Stiles follows her more moderately, and keeps opening the doors to Derek, just as he said he would. His father locks the doors before disappearing upstairs, reappearing with a first aid kit.

‘’What will we do first?’’ John asks, gaze flitting over Derek’s bleeding neck and the oversized sweater he’s wearing, imagining the horrors that lay beneath.

‘’I think we should take care of Derek’s situation first,’’ Stiles says, gesturing towards the collar. He addresses his next words to the wolf, ‘’If you take the sedative immediately, you should conk out in, what was it, thirty minutes?’’

Meredith nods, confirming this. She’s the one who has degree in Pharmaceutical Science, the one who’d created half of the medicine designed to werewolves. She’s been a were for mere handful of years, but has done more to the community that would belie her experience with enhanced senses.

Derek hesitates, staring at Meredith as she goes through her bag, producing two bottles of unmarked medicine. ‘’What if I wake up in the middle? You’ll have to restrain me somehow.’’

‘’Rest assured, Derek,’’ she says calmly. ‘’I have witnessed three hour operations with this exact medicine, on a very much heavier and muscular wolf than you are, and she didn’t wake up. Your situation is far different, but I should think that the medical combination is enough to keep you under, especially considering the thorough strain your body has undergone these past years. Your system is tired and worn thin, and more likely than not, your brain and nervous system will force themselves to keep you unconscious.’’

Derek thinks this for a minute, before grabbing at the pills. ‘’Take two,’’ Meredith guides him. Stiles offers him a glass of water, and he swallows them immediately.

‘’That’s it?’’ John asks, a little incredulous. ‘’You didn’t even ask her what’s in them.’’

Shrugging very carefully, Derek says, ‘’I’ve gone through a lot worse than waking up to either of you digging under my skin to find the microchip, or trying to melt this collar off my neck.’’

John rubs a hand over his face and looks away.

Stiles huffs out a breath. ‘’Okay. Where did you set up our tarp and stuff? We should probably settle there while Derek can still walk there himself and see the tools, know what he’s agreeing to.’’

John points outside. ‘’In the garage. I figured the bathroom was going to be too small to operate anything, and the tools for welding metal are all there.’’

‘’Makes sense.’’ Stiles jumps to his feet. ‘’Derek, do you want to eat or drink before we do this? You’ll probably be out of it for a while after we’re done, and your body will need sustenance to be able to heal itself.’’

‘’I could eat,’’ the wolf agrees. ‘’But nothing that I can’t swallow.’’

‘’We probably still have those Campbell’s chicken noodle soups in here somewhere.’’ Stiles heads to the kitchen and starts bustling around. He boils water for Meredith so she can drink some tea, and the sheriff settles down with the cup of coffee he brewed almost twenty minutes ago.

As the soup boils, Stiles takes Derek upstairs to his room. The wolf offers a raised eyebrow at the excessive amount of clothing, but doesn’t say anything about it, even when he must realize they’re for him.

‘’So I figured that, should your healing not kick in right away, we should probably clean and re-bandage your wounds and blisters while you can still give consent to it.’’

‘’Oh,’’ Derek says, before he nods. ‘’Okay.’’

Stiles motions him to take off his clothes and to lay on the bed. ‘’I’m gonna hop into the bathroom to get all the things I need, but I’ll be back. I uh, locked the door so that neither my dad nor Meredith can come in uninvited. Is that okay?’’

Something softens in Derek’s gaze. ‘’Thank you,’’ he says as an lieu of an answer.

‘’Cool,’’ Stiles bops his head. ‘’I’ll be back. Just lay down and get as comfortable as you can get.’’

It takes Stiles a couple minutes to gather everything before he goes back to his room to find Derek buck naked, laying on the bed belly down. Stiles has to swallow down his initial reaction, the position the wolf is in almost sinfully desirable, the man’s knees parted and his bottom just slightly lifted up. Almost like he’s presenting himself to Stiles.

And then he focuses on the scarring and the blisters marring the man’s skin, and the low pool of arousal dies immediately. Derek’s muscles are tense with what Stiles depicts as pain, making him feel instantly guilty for even entertaining any other thought than getting the man healed up and healthy.

‘’Hi,’’ he says, and Derek turns his head to look at him.

‘’Hi,’’ Derek responds quietly, his pupils dilated with silent sort of agony.

Stiles drops the stuff onto the head of the bed, letting Derek see what he has. He takes the wet wipes out first. ‘’Is it okay if I clean up the rashes and blisters with this?’’

‘’Yeah,’’ Derek says, and Stiles clambers behind the man’s naked backside. ‘’Sorry if this hurts,’’ Stiles murmurs, before he starts carefully wiping the injured skin. As before, the worst of the puss filled blisters are in the creases where the skin is thinnest, and the white wipes come out with streaks of yellow and red. He starts with the bends of the man’s knees, working himself up both legs. The area surrounding Derek’s anus isn’t as bad as it could be, but it still extracts a lot of pus, so he wipes it down, glad that his fingers are long enough to keep the bottom cheeks open without having to constantly pull them apart for access and make the skin more tight, which might hurt Derek more. The wolf can’t quite hide the flinching of his muscles whenever Stiles hits a particularly sore spot. When he’s done with the back thighs and the crack of Derek’s bottom, he quietly asks Derek to turn over so he can go through the front.

The wolf complies easily, instantly hiding his face with his arms, but not before Stiles catches a glimpse of tear stained cheeks.

Fuck.

Deciding to do what he does best to distract Derek from the pain, Stiles starts talking.

‘’Okay, so, there’s like this one girl in my class, Stella, that I’m friends with, kind of. Sort of, more like essay partners, but, you know, the details aren’t all that important. And she’s like, the most bubbliest, happiest person on earth, so I have no idea why she’s in criminal justice, but she is. Anyway, she’s lived in New York for as long as she can remember, and she’s had this job as a cashier for over five years. She loves it.’’

He pushes Derek’s right leg a little further open so he can access the space between his thigh and his groin, the underside of Derek’s testicles badly burned from electricity. He winces, but continues to tell the story cheerfully.

‘’So, like, she tells me these stories about her customers all the time, and one day there was this little ol’ grandma on her line. And like I said, she’s a very happy person, and extremely extroverted, so she’ll basically talk to anyone. So, the grandma comes up to her and she only has a packet of minced meat with her. But it’s not the vacuum sealed kind, but the kind they have on their fresh produce counter. And the containers are apparently very poorly made, so they leak fairly often with products like those.’’

He lets the other leg go and turns his attention to the other, careful not to touch anything too roughly.

‘’And she comes up and Stella asks, ‘’Would you like a small plastic bag with your meat, ma’am?’’ and the grandma just smiles politely, shaking her head, and just kindly responds to Stella, ‘’It’s okay dear, I’ll be eating this right away in my car.’’ and she like. Can’t believe her ears. She’s just like, oh my god, what? Bear in mind, that she’s not in the know of supernatural, and the old granny probably wasn’t a granny to begin with.’’

Derek lets out a quiet huff that Stiles decides to interpret as amusement.

‘’I know, I know. I laughed like half an hour after I heard that particular story.’’

He wipes down the space between the man’s navel and happy trail, as well as the V of his legs. Derek particularly cramps with pain when he touches those two places, even when the wounds there don’t look nearly as bad as the ones in his groin. He wonders if the vulnerability of showing his belly is what made him react as strongly, but decides to not ask.

‘’Okay,’’ he says eventually, after deeming the worst of it over. ‘’Now I’m gonna put some salve on them, okay? It should only feel cool against your skin. If it tingles or stings, tell me and I’ll wash it away, because your skin shouldn’t react to it that way.’’

Derek nods underneath his arms, and Stiles goes back to work. This time he narrates what he’s doing and where he’s going to touch next, kind of mentally kicking himself for not realizing to do that earlier, so that Derek would’ve known where Stiles was headed instead of having to guess.

It takes him fifteen minutes to go through all of it, before he tapes up the bigger wounds on the man’s torso. At the end of it, both of them are sweating, though Stiles is only huffing from exertion while Derek is covered in fine sheen of sweat due the pain.

‘’Alright. You can put your clothes back on. Or, wait. Maybe you should take a fresh pair of sweats and shirt, since your old ones look to be sort of yellowish on places.’’

Derek nods, giving a faint, ‘ _Thank you’_ before he disappears into the bathroom. Stiles sighs, just wanting the day to finally be over.

 

Derek manages to eat half a bowl before he starts drooping heavily, so Stiles takes him to the garage.

John has set up a camping bed in the middle of the space, clearing everything out in the closest proximity of it, and wrapping the tarp around the bed as a makeshift bed sheet. Everything smells of disinfectant rather than motor oil, and for a one blindsiding moment, Stiles feels so much love and affection towards his father that he almost starts crying.

‘’I couldn’t do much for your comfort,’’ John apologizes to Derek, who just shrugs in response.

‘’This is good.’’

Derek takes off his shirt and settles onto the bed, goosebumps littering his naked skin. Stiles examines his visible bruises he didn’t bandage with critical eye when the wolf flops down on his belly, noting that none of the marks he’d witnessed couple days ago have even started to heal. In fact, all of them look infected, black veins oozing along the skin. He hadn’t paid attention to that particular information earlier, focused too intently into the details rather than the bigger picture.

The sheriff gives a faint, _‘What the hell’_ before he has to step outside for a minute, looking rather green. Stiles lets his father go and concentrates on the task at hand.

‘’Have you ever dug a wolfsbane bullet out of a were?’’ he asks Meredith, who nods.

‘’If you want, I can try and find the microchip. If you have tweezers, that would ease things a little.’’

‘’Yeah, that could work,’’ Stiles says, and goes through the implements his father has brought out. ‘’Derek told me that he thinks the chip is under either of his shoulder blades. He couldn’t say which one, because he wasn’t awake for the implementation of it, but apparently he’s gone through enough of his skin that it certainly isn’t anywhere his front, arms, legs or stomach.’’

‘’Noted,’’ she says, coming to stand next to him. ‘’His heartbeat is slowing down,’’ she whispers, picking up the tweezers Stiles had yet to lay his eyes upon.

He glances back at the wolf, and sees his eyes closed. ‘’I was just wondering,’’ Stiles says quietly, ‘’Should we be giving him some extra oxygen like they do in the TV? Like, if we start digging around his body, shouldn’t it affect his breathing?’’

‘’If you have such a machine lying here somewhere, it wouldn’t hurt,’’ Meredith says, which Stiles makes a face to.

‘’No, I don’t.’’

‘’Then we cannot give him extra oxygen to help his lungs and heart to keep going. And we don’t have time to produce such thing now anyway. We’re walking on thin ice as it is, his body won’t withstand much longer of the extensive aconite poisoning. He’s got twenty four hours, tops.’’

Stiles stares up at her, fear suddenly grabbing at his chest. ‘’Are you serious?’’

‘’Do I look like I’m joking?’’ she asks flatly.

Rubbing a hand over his mouth, his heart starts galloping frantically in his chest. ‘’Jesus fucking christ,’’ he breathes, leaning against the side table. His hands start shaking. ‘’Jesus fucking christ,’’ he repeats, the words almost choking him.

‘’Don’t call His name in vain,’’ Meredith says, slapping gently at the back of his head. ‘’Everything is now in God’s hands, and that means our hands. He will guide us through this, and if He wants your wolf to live, then he will.’’ Her tone gentles. ‘’Stiles. Calm down. We can still save him. We have all the tools we need, and should worse come to worse, in his weakened state, we can even admit him to a hospital, get him human medical care.’’

‘’Right,’’ he chokes, his eyes getting moist. ‘’Right. We can still save him. Like hell I’m gonna lose him when I’ve come so close to getting him to safety.’’

He glances at Derek again. The wolf’s expression is now rather peaceful, his breathing slowing as he falls deeper into slumber.

‘’Tell me exactly when we can get things rolling. We can’t waste another second of his life to waiting around.’’

‘’He’s not ready yet,’’ Meredith says immediately. ‘’But soon.’’ She takes a look around and spots an unopened box of white medical gloves. She takes it and puts it near the other implements she has chosen. ‘’You will take care of the collar, yes?’’

Stiles nods, imperceptibly wiping his eyes. ‘’Yeah, I’ll get the collar off of him. Dad’s got the tools for it, and I’ve used them in the past to fix up Roscoe.’’

‘’We’ll need your father to supervise his breathing. I won’t be able to hear it through the flamethrower.’’

‘’Yeah, he knows. He’s coming back, soon probably. It kinda, took him by surprise. The state of him-’’

‘’And I don't wonder why,’’ Meredith says. ‘’I’m still amazed at all the things I can heal naturally, without any remedies, and how fast it happens. Your father is very used to werewolves just patching themselves up without any damage left behind.’’ She frowns a little. ‘’Do you know Derek’s blood type? He might lose a lot of blood, and taking him to the hospital to recuperate might not be a bad idea after all.’’

‘’Shit,’’ Stiles says, ‘’No. I don’t. It’s never crossed my mind, to be honest.’’

‘’Well. He’s been registered as he was born, so his medical files should probably have that information,’’ Meredith guesses. ‘’Though I have no idea if born wolves give birth in hospitals. They might not, and therefore the information might not ever been disclosed.’’

‘’Well, if we drag him in, half dead, then they’ll probably take some tests and shit to figure it out? I mean, they can’t leave him without medical help just because they don’t know his blood type. Right?’’

Meredith rolls her eyes. ‘’Of course they won’t. It doesn’t take long to determine one’s blood type. It would just speed things up to have that info from the get to go.’’

‘’Right,’’ Stiles nods his head in rapid succession. ‘’Okay. So, uh, what’s our plan? Dad’s obviously gonna be guarding Derek’s breathing, but are we two going to be working at the same time on two different things?’’

‘’That was the idea, yes. We need to be as quick as we can as to not overexert his already overwhelmed body.’’

‘’Okay,’’ Stiles agrees. ‘’And when we’re done?’’

‘’When we’re done, we’ll see if he starts healing immediately, how much blood he lost and if his heart can work through everything. If the wounds don’t start disappearing immediately, I’d take him to the hospital and have police officer come guard his door. Preferably someone in the know. That way we can ensure that during the night, nobody will be able to harm him while we’re not there to make sure he’s alright.’’

Stiles blinks at her, a little dumbfounded. ‘’Nobody has ever taken ER as an valid choice after a battle. Not ever. Not even me! And I’m human.’’

The woman raises her eyebrow that’s so judgemental Stiles has brief flashbacks to Boyd.

‘’What? I didn’t want anyone thinking I was either doing drugs, or having fights at school or that dad was abusing me. Those are all some valid concerns right there.’’

Meredith just shakes her head. ‘’Call your father in. We’re good to go.’’

Stiles jerks up and clambers away from the room, catching his dad as he enters back in from the back porch, and takes him to the garage.

They have some operating to do.

  
  


Stiles stares at the bag of blood dripping slowly into a tube, the white plastic circling down to Derek’s arm where Meredith had clawed an incision and poked a needle in.

Slowly but surely, the bruises littering Derek’s face will be disappearing, though it’ll take up to a week for everything to be healed up. Stiles had freaked out at first that they'd failed, but Meredith had assured him that even if Derek isn’t healing the visible bruises on his skin, his body has started to clog the internal bleeding he’d had going on, as well as some other internal organs. Stiles honestly doesn’t want to know _how_ she knows, whether she can smell it or hear the knitting together of the cells. He can’t help but be fascinated with the whole thing though.

But most importantly, everything _will_ heal, or most of it. The biggest scars might leave permanent disfigurement on the skin, though they’ll be very faint, and only visible if one knows about them, or are trying to look at them.

They’d operated Derek successfully in half an hour, getting out the chip without damaging it, and Stiles had managed to get the collar off without burning Derek much at all. The metal had weakened enough after the treatment of the flamethrower that the pliers did the rest of the job with relative ease.

They hadn’t taken him to the hospital after all, opting to call Melissa instead. She’d been able to access Derek’s files, finding that he was a frequent blood donor, because _of course_ he was, and then stole a bag of said blood type from the storeroom, driving herself to the Stilinski residence to deliver the goods. That was three hours ago.

There’s a saline bag waiting to be attached into the needle after all the blood has been transferred. Stiles is rather transfixed on the _drip-drip-drip_ of the blood, his fried brain grateful for the monotonous activity. They’d situated Derek into his old room, figuring that the familiar smells would, once again, benefit his healing and let him rest peacefully.

Meredith had taken the sofa and fallen asleep after eating, John retreating to his office to do some paperwork while everyone waited for the rest of the people to arrive. Stiles had holed himself up with Derek’s unconscious form, afraid that the wolf would suddenly stop breathing if nobody was supervising him. His good old computer chair was still up in his room, and he’s been sitting on it ever since.

There’s a commotion downstairs, which Stiles takes as a sign that everyone has arrived. It’s Danny that enters the room after a couple ten minutes, dragging his laptop with him.

‘’Hey,’’ Danny greets him quietly, sitting down on the floor by Derek’s bed. ‘’How is he?’’

Stiles shrugs, making his old computer chair creak lightly. ‘’Not dead. Breathing.’’

Danny nods, like he expected nothing less. Or more. Maybe he didn’t. ‘’So,’’ the human says, looking up at Stiles. ‘’We finally figured out the Cora angle.’’

‘’Oh?’’ Stiles perks up a little, despite his exhaustion. ‘’What’s her deal?’’

‘’Well,’’ Danny says, grimacing, ‘’It’s less of ‘what’s her deal’ and more ‘what’s her _pack’s_ deal’.’’

Frowning, Stiles cocks his head. ‘’I’m confused.’’

Danny taps at his computer for a moment and then offers it up for Stiles, image after image compiled into a file. ‘’Turns out her pack found out about Derek’s full transformation to wolf. When she’d fled the fire, she had obviously gone under a fake name to throw everyone off the loop. But when Derek found her, _they_ found out about Cora too. The Hales are rather old as bloodlines go, and born wolves are getting more and more rare these days, so the full shift has kind of disappeared from the generations of bitten wolves. So they wanted her to stay in their pack, no matter what, in hopes that she’ll one day mate with one of the pack’s betas.’’

His brows jumping to his hairline, Stiles looks at Danny like he’s gone bonkers. ‘’They wanted Cora to get pregnant and settle down? _Cora_ ? _Cora Hale?_ Are they crazy?’’

‘’Yeah, well, I know just as well as you do that Cora would be the last person on earth to settle down just to have kids. But that’s apparently what her plan is. So that’s, kind of, where things got tricky. And by tricky, I mean they get extremely dubious, and then they get worse.’’

‘’What did they do?’’

Danny sighs. He knows that arctic tone of Stiles’ very well. ‘’We know that Cora as she was before their sibling trip to Argentina wouldn’t have driven Derek away, because she can read between the lines and call out on his self-sacrificing bullshit. The reason she didn’t is because the Alpha of the pack took parts of her memories away. So when Derek told her about, you know, what happened during the fire, she believed it full heartedly when Derek blamed himself for it, because she had no memories of the fire at the time. And when that drove a wedge between the siblings, the Alpha kept on feeding lies to her about Derek’s involvement with the death of Laura, telling her about how he abandoned her when she needed him, and how he had conspired with the crazy uncle just so he could become the alpha himself. When the pack drove Derek off, the Alpha decided to take rest of her memories away as well, planting new ones in place.’’

‘’What new memories?’’ Stiles asks quietly, his voice quivering with anger.

‘’We’re not.. Entirely sure? But they somehow convinced her that she hasn’t got any of her old pack left alive. I don’t think she knows about Derek now at all. She certainly didn’t recognize any of the pictures my informants had showed her. They’ve carefully manipulated her into thinking that there’s nothing outside of pack for her, took away all her old friends and support systems and made her completely reliant on them. Classic abuse tactic. And that would be the end of it, except that we couldn’t understand why the pack would go all the way to trash and burn Derek’s car. Was it because the scents would be familiar and she’d want to investigate? Would the Camaro spark unwanted memories?’’

Stiles taps at all of the pictures he sees. Cora’s demeanor is so far from the grumpy, closed up person she used to be. In fact, it’s almost like her entire personality has changed. She looks like a girlish college grad, up to her makeup and her pink and white fashion sense. Far cry from the leather jackets and black clothes and surly expressions and surviving with howler monkeys in the jungle with only herself for help. The person in the pictures doesn’t seem like Cora at all.

‘’Well, I dug a little deeper then,’’ Danny continues, ‘’And found out that the alpha had sold Derek’s whereabouts to the hunters.’’

‘’What?’’ Stiles snaps, his mouth agape.

‘’Yeah,’’ Danny nods. ‘’Since he couldn’t bear cubs, they only wanted his sister. And so, when they sold the information, they thought the hunters would kill Derek, instead of capturing him, so they weren’t lying when they said she had nobody from her old pack left alive. Because they thought Derek was dead.’’

‘’Holy shit,’’ Stiles whispers. ‘’They turned against one of their own kind. For what? Full shift cubs to continue a new bloodline?’’

‘’Basically,’’ Danny confirms. ‘’Having a full shift wolf in their pack will give them fame within the supernatural community, but mating with one? Having full shift offspring from an old bloodline?’’ He whistles. ‘’That would give them _power_. Unmitigated power and respect from all the packs surrounding them. They wouldn’t have to fight for territory. Wolves from all kinds of packs would want to be granted a place in their ranks and they could choose only the strongest of the strongest. Cora is just a literal tool for them.’’

‘’Did you get her out of there?’’ Stiles grits out, because like hell they would leave Cora in that kind of situation.

‘’We tried, but she wouldn’t budge.’’

Making a strangled sound, Stiles almost flips the laptop off his lap in anger before Danny hastily continues, ‘’She’s okay, in a way that she isn’t in immediate danger. They all dote on her, so we figured that we’d deal with this Derek issue first, and then start another plan to smuggle Cora out of Argentina and back to Beacon Hills.’’

Taking a couple deep breaths, Stiles calms himself down. It’s good thinking. Derek is in worse shape and needs immediate attention, while Cora has managed herself for the  past years just fine, so another week or a month won’t worsen her case.

‘’She’s -- She’s not pregnant, though, is she? They haven’t forced her to. . .’’

Danny shakes his head. ‘’I’m pretty sure they’re taking their time since they think all of their threats have been eliminated.’’

‘’Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,’’ Stiles mutters angrily. He gives the computer back. ‘’Thanks for telling me. It’s not going to be easy to explain all of this to Derek though. Jesus.’’

‘’I’d imagine not,’’ Danny says. He closes the laptop and stands up. ‘’C’mon. Everyone’s downstairs. We’ll need to go over a few details before we get any further with tonight’s plans.’’

Stiles looks over at Derek’s sleeping form. ‘’I don’t want him to wake up alone.’’

‘’We’ll keep an ear on him. I’m sure someone will let you know when he’s starting to resurface from his slumber.’’ Danny takes stock on the wolf briefly. ‘’Though it looks like he might not even wake up tonight, if tomorrow either. He looks like he needs more than a month’s worth of sleep.’’

‘’True,’’ Stiles concedes, and follows Danny downstairs with one last squeeze of Derek’s lax hand.

 

 

 

 


End file.
